[ode] Style Writers Guide/Editing Requirements


Kim Lester (kim@dfusion.com.au)
Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:26:10 +0000


> > > Anyone got a writer's guide / style manual we could use as a basis to
> > > develop this? (OSWG? LDP? Debian-doc?)
> > Great idea -- maybe an author's kit with tools, guide, and a couple
> > of sample documents?
>
> Sounds good, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find one to use as
> a starting point yet. GNOME and LDP don't have one, I should probably
> check the BSD sites, Debian, and perhaps KDE as well. Any other ideas
> where to look for one?

We'll have a look around the net and depending on what we find
those interested might start another thread/ode list to nut
out a basic guide. This should not be a big thing, but a
work in progress which is expected to develop. I reckon between
us we could create a reasonable bullet list and perhaps overview
in a couple of weeks.

To start the ball rolling, I'd suggest looking at:
        http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/styles-stylesheet.html

 This is oreilly's guide for authors and includes a technical word
 spelling/capitalisation/hypening list etc.
 Some is relevant, some bits to do with fine typsetting control are
 not. It's a start.

 Of course out new tagged document format (ODF) will add extra
requirements
 in to the style guide, but will remove the primary aesthetic problems
(ie
 authors don't get to fiddle with the formatting other than baic
spacing)

 (We'll come to the "define requirements" bit really soon now I hope.)

  I think I quite like the idea of Wade's simple template input format
  for very short docs. It might cause more problems being yer another
format
  but it might be useful during the transition period for those who
  cant yet handle whatever format we choose). Main downside is probably
  that it won't support much in the way of indexing.

  regards

        Kim



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