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Category Archives: Documentation

praise git

07-Nov-08

We’ve been working with git as a distributed version control system (DVCS) for Fedora Documentation this release. All of these documents (Installation Guide, Release Note, and various README files) are authored in DocBook XML, so they work great within a VCS. Sure, it’s cool to work entirely offline, do granular commits, and merge perfectly with […]

Fedora wiki discussion list

21-Oct-08

At the wise prodding of Nigel, we created fedora-wiki@lists.fedoraproject.org. “Oh, dude,” you might say, “Why another freaking list?” Maybe you wonder why fedora-docs-list isn’t good enough, since Fedora Docs are the wiki gardeners? The scope of fedora-wiki@ is to be a moderate-level discussion list for everyone who edits the wiki. On the one hand, we […]

Your release notes are looking … thin

06-Oct-08

FREEZE :: Release notes content is freezing on the wiki for the Fedora 10 Preview Release on 08 October at 23:59 UTC. :: FREEZE If you take a look at the wiki pages that are the source for the release notes (Docs/Beats), note the list of content areas (beats) that remain unassigned. What’s going on […]

Your assignment for the upcoming F10 Beta relnotes

17-Sep-08

As Paul so kindly reminds us, Beta is a bigger attention point for a Fedora release. The release notes are front and center in that. Talk about, write in your blog, share on #fedora-devel and fedora-devel-list, scrawl this URL on the wall of the T station on your way to Harvard Square: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Beta/ReleaseNotes What do […]

Wiki structure and naming decisions

06-Sep-08

After moving to the new MediaWiki, it quickly became obvious that the old, CamelCase naming and organization scheme was insufficient. It did not take advantage of the more powerful MediaWiki categorization and namespace capability, created page names that are hard to understand and translate, and pages in CamelCase are (ironically) not searched properly by MediaWiki. […]

Fedora CMS focus and scope

19-Aug-08

After my post, Why and where Fedora needs a CMS solution, which included a follow-up discussion on fedora-websites-list, there were questions and gentle dissent. I think those stemmed mainly from it not being clear what the intended scope is for a CMS solution. There were also calls for one or another specific CMS solution, which […]

Why and where Fedora needs a CMS solution

13-Aug-08

Since I answer these questions regularly, as has been this history of this discussion, I’m hammering it out in one location forevermore. A wiki is a lovely thing, in its own way and when used properly. It is a community documentation tool, making it very, very easy to collaborate on creating ad hoc or planned […]

Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Alpha release notes

04-Aug-08

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Alpha/ReleaseNotes We’re going to keep them editable unless things really get slammed. The new wiki is structured to handle the scale of a release, unlike previous releases, and I’m happy to give it the test under fire. Something missing? Use the [edit] link. Edit link missing? Try Log in / create account.

Deep writer, beat writer — finding your niche in Fedora

21-Jul-08

Some years ago we brought the concept of a beat writer in to Fedora, as a way of merging a tradition from writing with a tradition from open source. By breaking down a monolothic document such as the Fedora release notes in to modular chunks, multiple people can collaborate on the whole document while keeping […]

Let’s talk about release notes, shall we?

21-Jul-08

This process is really simple: You write content here. We edit the heck out of it. For Alpha and Beta releases, we make a one-page here. For RC to final, we take all that writing and editing to make up one set of rump-bumping release notes. People, please! You know something already that should be […]