Martin Wheeler (mwheeler@startext.co.uk)
Mon, 10 Jan 2000 16:25:48 +0000 (GMT)
FYI -- sorry to all those who've already received this n times;
the ode-discuss list wasn't around when I first posted it.
******************************************************************
Kim __
I'm CCing this to ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org, and hoping that by some
mixture of magic and osmosis it will eventually end up in the in-trays of
interested readers of:
ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org
ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org
debian-doc@lists.debian.org
oswg-discuss@oswg.org
ldp-meta@franklin.oit.unc.edu
osrt@metalab.unc.edu
linuxkb-discuss@seul.org
gnome-doc-list@gnome.org
as I fear that cross-posting to all would be counter-productive at the moment.
But I have no idea how to hit all interested parties in one go.
Anyone offered to host ode-discuss@<wherever> yet?
[Debian? OSWG? Any offers anyone? Haven't the resources myself or would
offer.]
One point I have not seen discussed (or even mentioned) so far is the
inevitable necessity of having a team of editors involved in this initiative.
(All writers can benefit from working with a good editor -- I'm a writer; I
know.)
Not only to correct the typos, orthographic errors, dubious grammar and
semantic ambiguities any writer eventually becomes blind to, but -- far more
essentially -- to ensure that coherent form and structure are maintained and
understood by all members of a hugely disparate team, usually working in
(almost) total isolation from one another.
It's a QA control no serious writing project can afford to be without --
when properly applied, the benefits are a massive impact on reader perception
of professional credibility. (Which, I believe, was your concern in the first
place in calling for greater co-ordination).
As a group, we would be foolish to ignore this.
In this particular instance, assigning an (SGML-savvy) editor to each and every
document in the repository would, I believe, solve a great many problems
(while causing a few others, I have no doubt). I'm perfectly prepared to take
on this type of contribution to the initiative; any other takers care to join
me in an editing team?
(Retires gracefully under a hail of rocks, to shouts of: "Get off! / Texinfo
rules!" etc. etc. etc.)
To make myself perfectly clear -- I see the writer's job as producing clear,
unambiguous authoritative text for local document purposes; I see the
collaborating editor's job as helping the writer ensure that that text
conforms to the overall structural needs of the [global] documentation
project. (SGML-based or otherwise.)
Obviously, if the writer were able to mark up text appropriately, this would
be a bonus; but I feel we should make provision for coping with cases where
this is either not the case, or where legacy texts require translation.
A single editor could probably quite easily cope with marking up and
maintaining a number of different documents.
I'm also assuming that we can agree on a single markup format for all master
documents -- my own suggestion would be SGML [DocBook DTD], as being the most
appropriate for the purposes of editing / publishing; electronic or
conventional.
Thoughts, anyone?
Martin
-- Martin Wheeler - StarTEXT - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England mwheeler@startext.co.uk http://www.startext.co.uk/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon Jan 10 2000 - 11:29:47 EST