On 12/31/2016 01:51 PM, Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:
Gesendet: Freitag, 30. Dezember 2016 um 23:00 Uhr Von: "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> An: opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-wiki] Why is this acceptable?
On 2016-12-30 19:34, PatrickD Garvey wrote:
On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 3:12 AM, Sarah Julia Kriesch <> wrote:
Sarah, To put my response to your reply succinctly, you're not seeing the world through my eyes.
As I understand it, your perception of the variety of tools used to accomplish the tasks required to support the openSUSE project and the SUSE product is an opportunity to learn many things. My perception is each learning opportunity is a use of time that is needed to produce the components of the project/product that is non-productive if one has already learned a tool and it's syntax that does the job.
Learning a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ... documentation tool is non-productive when my objective is to provide high quality documentation. The fact there are three different syntax's that are used by three different documentation producing sub-communities also increases the effort required to coordinate the work of those sub-communities such that the same documentation is produced only once, not three times. The fact there is a link in the openSUSE wiki to a GitHub file indicates it takes an unnecessary expenditure of time for a new member of the openSUSE project just to locate the documentation, let alone keep it up to date.
Producing software products is still a very labor-intensive process. Diverting available time to repeated re-learning of a mastered skill is a serious cost to the quality, as well as the quantity, of the output.
With my user and tech writer hat on, I agree.
-- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R. Thanks for your feedback!
You read the view of a Software Developer by Ancor (YaST Developer at SUSE), too. @Ancor: Thanks that you answered the question with Github of the view of somebody in the Development at SUSE. :-)
Open Source Developers are using Github and write their documentation there. Ancor and the YaST Team are doing that for YaST here: http://yast.github.io/documentation
Well, in fact we are using Github for the developer-oriented documentation and keeping the wiki for the user-oriented documentation. In my original mail I already explained why Github is the right place to reach potential developers. And it's not realistic to expect translated documentation for developers (they will have to communicate in English to get the patches accepted anyways). That's why we decided it was fine to leave the rather inconvenient (for our purposes) wiki behind. But just for developer doc. We don't plan to move the user documentation because we see the strengths of the wiki for that (it's a known central place, it's known by our community of translators, etc.).
The normal user (user of openSUSE) wants to use a wiki of their Linux distribution. That can give the best overview about the operating system. We (wiki Team) are responsible for updating it. We don't have many Developers on the mailing list. That was the reason for linking the Github documentation on the wiki page. It is difficult to get a Developer for writing his documentation on both portals (Github and wiki). They have got the same meaning like you as a Technical Writer. They want to use one platform and commit their code and documentation on one way.
If you want them to use any platform different than Markdown files at Github, you have to make sure the extra effort pays off for them.
I have got the view of a System Administrator: I want to have happy cumstomers and developers! What can I do for having both? I view the work of developers on Github/ mailing list/ release notes until now and updated the wiki. I live freedom, that everybody can contribute where he likes.
One Slogan I learned in my first job: "Happy cows give better milk!" Is the cow more happy while running free or being locked-in? You can transfer it to an open source project: -> Happy Developers (with freedom) develop better software. -> Happy System Administrators (with freedom) make better system administration. -> Happy Technical Writers (with freedom) write better documentations.
Now we have got the questions, why we have got a third documentation tool. This tool can create a completely documentation in pdf. Some customers want to have a printed or pdf version of a documentation. Every other distrubtion has got it beside of their wiki, too. The Documentation Team at SUSE is doing most parts of this job at the moment. We should ask Christoph of this team after his view and meaning about documentations with different tools. @Christoph: How is your job with different tools (wiki/ doc/ Github)? Do you have ideas for improvements?
I want to have meanings of all different views in our wiki team before finding a solution. I want to have happy Contributors in our wiki Team. ;-)
And if we are talking about variety of tools, don't forget we have two for translators: Weblate for translating software and the wiki for translating... well, for translating the wiki. Theoretically, Weblate is powerful enough to be used to translate different sources, including a Wiki, stuff coming from Github, etc. But that of course means that somebody needs to set the system. Tools... the never-ending strength/weakness of the openSUSE project...
Enjoy the last hours of this year and have a happy new year! Best regards, Sarah
Happy new year. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org