How do I contribute to documentation?

Author Message

Leif Arne Storset

Friday 03 February 2006 5:44:07 am

eZ publish's greatest shortcoming is its incomplete documentation. How do I contribute? I've looked all around the website, but cannot find anything.

The old documentation pages claim that they are GPLed, but the new doc pages seem to have no free license. Is this correct? If so, does this mean we, the users, have to start our own documentation project?

Leif Arne Storset

Nicolas OTTAVI

Friday 03 February 2006 10:51:29 am

Yeah,

it would be definitively good if we could contribute to the documentation or start a "user documentation project" ...

I would participate if I could ...

Claude

Rodrigo Pinheiro

Friday 03 February 2006 11:19:23 am

Creating a Wiki would be great!

Sebastian Picklum

Friday 03 February 2006 2:09:00 pm

Well, an eZP driven Wiki would really be great. This could take the eZ Publish Community many steps further.

sp@php.net

Leif Arne Storset

Friday 03 February 2006 6:36:11 pm

An idea for an eZ publish-driven wiki has been rattling around my head for a while. Maybe I'll start a thread on it soon.

Leif Arne Storset

Kristof Coomans

Saturday 04 February 2006 12:03:45 am

A related thread:
http://ez.no/community/forum/general/new_article_section_on_ez_no/

I would also like an eZ publish wiki.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Gabriel Ambuehl

Saturday 04 February 2006 1:41:18 am

Guys, a ezpublish based wiki has been living in pubsvn for months now ;). So building a wiki amounts to adding stuff to it ;)

Visit http://triligon.org

Sebastian Picklum

Saturday 04 February 2006 4:28:03 am

Implementing a Wiki in eZ Publish is relatively easy (with or without the Wiki-extension) since you'll only need to permit anonymous users to edit content (if something goes wrong, there is always the possibility to restore a previous version... eZP is great, isn't it?).

Where should the wiki be hosted? On servers by eZ Systems or on private servers? Should it be a real wiki or should it be like the PHP-Doc where an "elected" group maintains all pages but other users are free to contribute.

sp@php.net

Gabriel Ambuehl

Saturday 04 February 2006 4:51:17 am

A few more features than just plain features are certainly useful for a wiki. Notably Wiki style text formatting [1] (or, at the very least, CamelCase linking) and certainly a feature to Diff [2] different versions of a site ;).

I can set up a demo wiki later today if that helps anyone?

[1] Achieved with a very slightly modified (so that it knows about ez sites) Pear_Text_Wiki as template operator

[2] I did use Pear_Text_Diff for that.

Visit http://triligon.org

Per-Espen Kindblad

Saturday 04 February 2006 6:28:08 am

Yes, the ez docs is not GNU anymore if I understand this right. I've written some paperbacks and in order to use some of the existing ez publish docs. and examples in my own paperback I had to get a confirmation from eZ systems. But you're not allowed to copy or take examples from the ez docs. and write your own book and sell it...because the docs belongs to ez systems.

This may reduce the willingness to contribute to ez documentation and sets limit to interests who want to contribute and write eZ publish documentation for economical causes.

Thomas Nunninger

Sunday 05 February 2006 1:56:12 am

Hi,

I do like the idea of a community documentation. (Remember, there just has been one which was merged to the "old documentation.) But I would prefer, if this documentation would be available on ez.no.

What is missing in the actual documentation? The actual documentation is very technical. There are no admin/designer/user tutorials, no FAQ, no tips & tricks, no howtos (like performance tuning), ...

If could imagine that eZ systems says: "The technical documentation is very time consuming. We concentrate on the API documentation. But you, the community, are welcome and supported to provide additional documentation."

In my opinion parts of the old documentation were not structured very well, e.g.:

- many subfolders and "empty folders" only saying something similar to "in this subtree you will find..."

- tips & tricks, FAQ where mixed with docu

- technical stuff was mixed with tutorials

- sometimes you were not able to see what belongs to which version of eZ publish

Perhaps we should ask eZ systems (eZ, feel free to answer here :-):

- What are your plans about extending the actual documentation in the named directions?

- What do youo think about a community docu (e.g. on ez.no/community/community_documentation_project)?

And later we need to discuss how to prevent the quality problems with the old documentation, navigation, workflows, contribution, different releases, ...

Perhaps we should start discussig the specifications of such a project and later we should discuss (with eZ systems) if we can do this here or on another domain. (But I guess that eZ systems would gain from such a project too :-)

Just my thoughts...

Have a nice day

Thomas

Per-Espen Kindblad

Sunday 05 February 2006 2:38:12 am

"(But I guess that eZ systems would gain from such a project too :-)"

I agree and have already mentioned this to Aleksander Farstad. Documentation is important, and there exist some usermanuals which are not so technical (for ordinary users and administrators), but these are not official ez docs and are to be found another place than ez.no.

I know many people who have tested eZ publish, find the developer/technical documentation far too difficult to understand and just drops eZ publish and go on with checking out other Content Management solutions. These could be the customers of eZ publish if documentation was better.

Zak Greant

Sunday 05 February 2006 5:05:18 pm

The docs are under the GNU Free Documentation License.

I think that the footer was just stripped out when the new site was released.

I have filed a bug report on the issue (http://ez.no/bugs/view/7798)

Per-Espen Kindblad

Monday 06 February 2006 1:04:48 am

I have a question to this.

If I write a book with my own text and own examples, and uses a couple of examples from the ez docs. which are licenced under GNU, what then with the book? Does the book have to be GNU licenced or is it possible to GNU licence only parts in this book?

Zak Greant

Monday 06 February 2006 7:46:57 am

If you write a book and include work that is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, then the entire book should be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

See section 4 of the GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) for more information

Balazs Halasy

Monday 06 February 2006 7:52:51 am

Hi,

We're currently working on end-user documentation and updating/maintaining the existing technical manual. The end-user doc will be a user manual which is organized in the same fashion as the technical manual. It will consist of two parts: one which will be a comprehensive walkthrough of the most important parts of the administration interface and one which will cover so called "daily tasks". The latter will explain users about stuff like how to navigate the tree, how to add new content, how to edit existing content, undo changes (reverting to an older version) and so on. This is in the works and it is coming. Please be patient. I think it will be available sometime around March.

Please note that delivering good documentation and keeping it up to date is extremely timeconsuming. We're doing our best but we do not have so much resources for this part. The community is welcome to contribute! Unfortunately we do not have a good solution for this at ez.no. My suggestion would be that the community deploys their own solution and gathers enough people who can start working on producing docs, tutorials, howtos, etc. Please keep in mind that you'll also have to manage, maintain and keep the stuff up to date. We'll gladly share our plans so that we can coordinate the work. Lets start some kind of cooperation where for example eZ systems delivers main/core-docs and the community produces surrounding howtos, tutorials, etc. What do you think?

Allman - doc guy

Sandro Groganz

Monday 06 February 2006 7:57:15 am

You folks could set up a community documentation project site.

Make it a Wiki based on eZ publish for example. If you base it on eZ publish 3.8, you could even make use of the new multilanguage features and make the docs available in different languages.

Then eZ systems would care about the cathedral-style docs and the eZ community about the bazaar-style docs - if you know what I mean :) Both approaches can deliver high-quality information and complement each other nicely.

I see a great potential for cooperation here. I also see the need that the community doc team gets more information from eZ systems about future eZ doc plans so that we all don't write about the same things twice.

Sandro Groganz
Chief Knowledge Officer

Kristof Coomans

Monday 06 February 2006 10:14:32 am

Probably this community documentation project site could be hosted at the community server (pubsvn). I'll discuss this with Paul Borgermans tomorrow.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Gabriel Ambuehl

Monday 06 February 2006 1:42:40 pm

I did set up a demo wiki at http://triligon.org/triligon/projects/mywiki/testwiki feel free to mess with it.

Visit http://triligon.org

Sandro Groganz

Friday 10 February 2006 6:46:53 am

@Kristof and Gabriel: maybe you want to join forces and set it up?

Any ideas on the "official" name? "eZ community documentation" ?

Any ideas on a domain name?

You want to base it on eZ publish 3.8 to allow multilingual content?

Maybe the regional community sites would like to host pages in their language ( ezpublish.de, ezpublish-france.fr)?

Any suggestions concerning the review process and group dynamics? You want to have a core of 4 people in charge of the project, reviewing content, inviting others to write/review?

How about the content license? I suggest one for all pages (otherwise it will become a mess with reusing content), either from Creative Commons or the GFDL.

Sandro Groganz
Chief Knowledge Officer

Powered by eZ Publish™ CMS Open Source Web Content Management. Copyright © 1999-2014 eZ Systems AS (except where otherwise noted). All rights reserved.