docs December 2005

docs@lists.fedoraproject.org

13 participants
25 discussions

Packaging progress
by Paul W. Frields 02 Jan '06

02 Jan '06

Hi Docs gangstas, I am steadily making progress toward a packaging solution. Thanks to Tommy jumping in with XSLT-based solutions, I learned a lot (although not nearly enough, of course) about how to solve other problems using the same building blocks. I also -- finally! -- figured out how to package documentation for KDE's khelpcenter, and believe me, it's not self-evident. Or rather, the end-state is comprehensible, but the procedure for getting there cleanly is not. In any case, that's solved too. Also, the "fedora-doc-common" RPM is just about ready for rollout and will contain (hopefully) everything required for people not operating out of CVS to build docs. Mostly this just involves including our XSL snippets, entities, custom scripts, and so forth. This is not to say that by installing this RPM people will be able to just happily build away, but it puts that goal within reach. Since the fedora-doc-* stuff will probably live in Fedora Extras, and because that is a rolling repository, it is much easier for us to work on this in phases. Phase One goals are for our currently available documents to be installable by an end user using yum, and that those documents should show up prominently in each of the locations a user might expect: 1. Launching "Desktop -> Help" for GNOME or KDE 2. Launching "Documentation -> [title]" I don't know yet what Phase Two entails, but some goals might include: 1. Nice Python scripts for creating new XML document templates 2. " " " for building DRAFT-marked documents? Some items I am still in the process of solving, by which I mean I should be able to finish them for Phase One: - The rpm-info.dtd needs some lovin': - Packages should not get separate versions, too confusing - Docs should not get releases, also confusing - Figure out a way to condense generic person entries for use as authors, editors, translators, and/or packagers? Alternately, remove those not needed -- e.g. packagers only need full name and email, authors, editors and translators need "component" names, and people performing revisions only need initials. Some reference to dbpoolx.mod shows this shouldn't be too hard to do. - Provide functionality to automatically sort "doc" or "rpm" revisions. Because RPM is particular about things like date formats in %changelog entries, we may need to "encourage" proper formatting using the DTD. We already have a *strong* hint there in the attributes Tommy provided, but I don't think there's anything built in to a DTD to check for ordering; I believe, however, that XSLT can sort. Anything we can do to bulletproof the process is probably good. If it proves too cumbersome to complete RSN, I'll push this off until Phase Two. That's it from my neck of the woods. Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays. The holiday break and the patience of my ever-lovin' wife are the main reason I've been able to work on this stuff for the last few days. Best to all, and here's to a Happy New Year! -- Paul W. Frields, RHCE http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/

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OpenOffice stylesheets
by Tommy Reynolds 28 Dec '05

28 Dec '05

Greetings, If memory serves me correctly, and there's always a first time, someone looked into using OpenOffice to output DocBook. Doesn't this need a stylesheet or something? I thouht it may be time to revisit this. Cheers

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Self Introduction: Martin Joseph Brej
by Martin Joseph Brej 23 Dec '05

23 Dec '05

1. Full legal name: Martin Joseph Brej * City, Country, Timezone: Monterey, California, USA (Pacific Time) * Profession: Software Consulting Manager * Company: International Business Machines Corporation * My goals in the Fedora Project: I enjoy using Fedora as a platform for my home personal computing needs and would very much like to help others become open source users as well--to help take the technology mainstream. I am not a coder, but do consider myself to be a power-user with strong familiarity with software development processes. I am a liberal arts major with a passion for explaining technology to others. * What do you want to write about? I am open to writing for any area within Fedora that most needs the help. My personal experience is that many programs are not documented or have documentation that is "rough and ready". I could help cover areas no one else currently is or supplement areas which are currently documented but in need of some polishing. * What other documentation do you want to see published? I have often looked at the documentation to get the answer to a configuration setting or to solve a problem on my own and found that it did not answer my question. * Do you want to edit for grammar/writing and/or technical accuracy? I am happy to edit for grammar/"read-ability" and technical accuracy if that is where I can best contribute immediately. I am not a professional writer, so that may be a good way for me to break in as a documentation contributor for Fedora. * Anything else special? I am an enthusiastic guy--what I may lack in experience, I know I will make up for in dedication and enthusiasm. Between work and family life, I do not have a ton of free time, but will commit realistically to deliverables and deadlines and deliver high quality work. My goal will be to write the doc that I wish were there when I needed to use it. * Historical qualifications * What other projects or writing have you worked on in the past? I have been on numerous software implementation projects as a programmer, designer, architect and project manager over my 17 years in the industry. I have written many presentations for customers and some training materials and documentation for the systems delivered. I have never been a documentation professional, however. * What level and type of computer skills do you have? I would label myself a "power-user". I like to diddle around and see how things work and learn the advanced configuration options, etc. It have been many years since I have been at the code level. I have played around recently with learning Java and scripting on the side, but have no serious programming skills to speak of anymore. * What other skills do you have that might be applicable? User interface design, other so-called soft skills (people skills), programming, etc. I am a very organized worker--part of my project management background, so over time, that may be an area that I can contribute as well. * What makes you an excellent match for the project? I spend most of my free time using Fedora and am passionate about building great software that is useful to others (and ideally, easy to use!) I think I express myself clearly and would like to contribute to Fedora instead of just consuming other people's excellent work without giving anything back. * GPG KEYID and fingerprint * pub 1024D/14A0CF3B 2005-12-02 [expires: 2006-12-02] * Key fingerprint = 202E 9B0A 2D20 C9B6 D703 1504 51D1 E1E8 14A0 CF3B * uid Martin Joseph Brej (Marty) <mjbrej(a)sbcglobal.net> * sub 1024g/273B7E4A 2005-12-02 [expires: 2006-12-02] --------------------------------------- Martin Joseph Brej 326 Monroe Street Monterey, CA 93940-2218 831-375-2735 h 831-521-3925 m mjbrej(a)sbcglobal.net e martinbrej (Yahoo!) im Ask me about getting a personal digital certificate.

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Docs/Beats/Samba page update
by Chris Lennert 23 Dec '05

23 Dec '05

Anyone mind if I update the Docs/Beats/Samba relnote page? In diving into some of the Docs/Beats/ServerTools BZ items, it appears that the Samba browsing warning is no longer warranted. Since the beat is uncovered, I don't mind updating the page to at least reflect this (welcome) change for FC5. -- Chris

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[Fwd: Fedora Core 5 Test 2 slipping until January 16]
by Karsten Wade 22 Dec '05

22 Dec '05

My friends, FYI, information below about the FC5 test2 schedule slip. Sorry to all about the delay from the documentation side. We missed our freeze last week. Fortunately, we now have more time to fix the problems in our process and make our promise next time! I am updating our documentation schedule this evening to reflect these new dates. Thanks - Karsten -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Jesse Keating <jkeating(a)redhat.com> Reply-To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases <fedora-test- list(a)redhat.com> To: List for Fedora Package Maintainers <fedora-maintainers(a)redhat.com>, For testers of Fedora Core development releases <fedora-test- list(a)redhat.com>, fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com Subject: Fedora Core 5 Test 2 slipping until January 16 Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:14:42 -0800 <to be sung to the tune of Jingle Bells> Dashing through the builds In a one cup holder desk O're the build errors we go Swearing all the way! Phones on dev's desks ring Making Managers frown What fun it is to cuss and swear re-baseing on GCC! Oh, software sucks, Software sucks, Software really sucks! Oh what fun it is to slip our release for a month! Software sucks, Software sucks, Software really sucks! Oh, what fun it is to slip our release for a month! We rebuilt java* once It wasn't very nice we rebuilt everything else to our user's delight! Broken deps still there Making testing fun We really thing we need to test for another month! Oh, software sucks, Software sucks, Software really sucks! Oh what fun it is to slip our release for a month! Oh What Fun It Is To Slip Our Release For A Monnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnth!!! Ok, it won't be a full month, but due to the recent upgrade of gcc and the subsequent full rebuild of everything that does (and doesn't, whoops!) get built with gcc, including java stuff with gcj, and the need to further test package selection windows in Anaconda, system-config-packages for upgrades, and the development tree in general once we settle down the rebuilds, we have decided to delay test2. Here is a new schedule that we will be working toward: * Test2 freeze date to 9 January * Test2 release, 16 January * Test3 freeze, 6 February * Test3 release, 13 February * Final absolute freeze, 6 March * Release, 15 March We are going to try very hard to have a stable(ish) tree suitable for testing over the holidays, so that Test2 will be better for the slip and keep us in line with getting Test3 and eventually the final release out in the best shape possible. Thank you all for your hard work in helping us develop the best distribution we can! -- Jesse Keating Release Engineer: Fedora -- Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/ gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41 Content Services Fedora Documentation Project http://www.redhat.com/docs http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

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[FYI] Apache FOP 0.90BETA1 Trial
by Tommy Reynolds 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

Hello, all! This is a status update. As you probably know, FDP intend to use Apache FOP to render the PDF versions of our documents. The 0.20.5 version is quite old; furious development is underway. The Apache FOP team have made available a beta release of their heavily-rewritten product. You can find out more from their http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/relnotes.html web site. I tried it out against the CVS versions of the Fedora Release Notes and thought you might like to see the results. You can find the English and Italian versions here: http://www.megacoder.com/nobots/RELEASE-NOTES-en.pdf http://www.megacoder.com/nobots/RELEASE-NOTES-it.pdf The Japanese version built, but the wrong font was used, so everything was a '#' character. The Russian version aborted. I think they look remarkably good, given that I used the original, mostly-generic PDF stylesheets. I haven't tried to compile this using GCJ; that's out of my range. Perhaps one of you might make one attempt, just to see what happens. As Karsten mentioned earlier, we should be getting some help with the graphics rendering component -- so we can avoid the closed-source libraries FOP uses. However, if we stick with .JPG and .EPS input graphics, the built-in FOP support should be quite good enough. We just need to get the GCJ compile going... Still, I prefer .PNG image files and am looking forward to the "correct" solution. Cheers

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Self-Introduction: Chris Lennert
by Chris Lennert 20 Dec '05

20 Dec '05

Full Name: Chris Lennert Location: Greenville, SC, USA (Eastern Standard Time) Profession: Network Administrator and developer Company: Woodward Governor Company Goals 1. What do you want to write about? I would be willing to cover the ServerTools beat. In addition, if the primary authors permit, I would be interested in contributing to the DesktopUserGuide and the Hardening Tutorial. 2. What other documentation do you want to see published? A Fedora-specific remote access tutorial that covers setting up VPN tunnels to several of the major firewall distros/products and which would serve as a starting point for folks looking to connect to corporate networks. Unless I am mistaken, I don't believe one exists. 3. Do you want to edit for grammar/writing and/or technical accuracy? As a former high school science teacher, I would be happy to correct grammar, "wordsmith" documents, and verify content. 4. Anything else special? I've been a dedicated consumer of FOSS for many years and have contributed in smaller ways in the past. Diving into the heart of the Fedora documentation efforts is one way for me to get off my arse and start contributing in a major way. Historical Qualifications 1. What other projects or writing have you worked on in the past? Since my job responsibilities in recent years have included user support, I have written various end-user-oriented documents. Several of these have been DocBook-based HTMLHelp documents (CHM's) for my predominantly Windows-based users. 2. What level and type of computer skills do you possess? I would characterize my level of skill as broad with moderate depth. I tend to prefer development-oriented tasks, but since my current employment also requires network/system administration and user support, I don't feel I qualify for the lofty title of "developer". Nevertheless, I am very comfortable with Java, XHTML/CSS, XSLT, DocBook markup and many of the Apache Java libraries. I have used most of the major Linux and BSD distributions though I tend to stay close to the Red Hat world. I have experience (implementation, at the least) with many of the most luminary FOSS applications. 3. What other skills do you have that might be applicable? User interface design, other so-called soft skills (people skills), programming, etc. I like to think of myself as an All-Around Nice Guy(TM). :) 4. What makes you an excellent match for the project? * Broad level of experience covering network & system administration, user support, and software development. * Java development experience * Experience with DocBook-related toolchains (mostly Ant-, Saxon- and Apache FOP-based) and XSL customization GPG KEYID and Fingerprint KEYID: DE8B9506 [calennert@rutherford ~]$ gpg --fingerprint DE8B9506 pub 1024D/DE8B9506 2005-12-09 [expires: 2007-12-09] Key fingerprint = E199 9CAD 955D 5CB7 ADB3 B05F EACC ACF9 DE8B 9506 uid Christopher Lennert <calennert(a)gmail.com> sub 2048g/6741E0E0 2005-12-09 [expires: 2007-12-09]

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docs rawhide install guide zh_CN is not built by default
by Yuan Yijun 19 Dec '05

19 Dec '05

Hi, I committed an updated version of translation but it was not built during last hour. What should I do to enable building? -- bbbush ^_^

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freenode
by Patrick W. Barnes 17 Dec '05

17 Dec '05

Over the last 20 hours, freenode has been trying to deal with a massive botnet attack. Over the course of that time, they removed the irc.freenode.net server to chat.freenode.net. Service has now been restored to irc.freenode.net, but freenode is considering a permanent transition to chat.freenode.net. In order to prepare for whatever changes freenode may make, I have adjusted references to irc.freenode.net on the wiki to point at the freenode website (http://freenode.net/) instead. For more information, or if you have trouble connecting to freenode, please see the news on their website at http://freenode.net/news.shtml I would encourage anyone who maintains websites or documentation to update their information in a similar manner. While we can expect irc.freeenode.net to remain operational for a long time to come, pointing to freenode's website rather than a server directly avoids dependency upon that server, and users will likely experience better service by visiting freenode's site and selecting a server that is geographically close to their location. -- Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes nman64(a)n-man.com http://www.n-man.com/ -- Have I been helpful? Rate my assistance! http://rate.affero.net/nman64/

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[ANN] Wiki is about to freeze for trans for test2, help needed for conversion
by Karsten Wade 14 Dec '05

14 Dec '05

I've been heads down on other projects and forgot to ride the schedule for the relnotes. D'oh! Mea culpa. We are two days late for freeze for translation, so have missed our agreed upon scheduling. We need to freeze soonest for test2 for trans. Freeze begins at 08:00 UTC 15 December. This gives the West Coast of the US, i.e., me, time to be useful. Is there anyone interested in helping with the conversion from MoinMoin to our XML for relnotes? The first step is automated (thanks Patrick!), so we get well-formed XML from fp.org/Docs/Beats. I need help with diffing and merging. I've been doing visual diffs, i.e., using my eyes, but I reckon that xmldiff or something similar could be really useful. I'll be working tonight, -0800 UTC (US West Coast) from before and after the 08:00 UTC freeze. I'll certainly be working on it by 21:00 PST/05:00 UTC. I also think an XML diff is useful for the translators. We need to work on getting that within our toolchain. I apologize to our friends in translation. Hopefully the content is not going to change that much, perhaps 10% churn and 15% added? Once I have a snapshot of the Wiki, at a few minutes after 08:00 UTC, I'll unfreeze the Wiki for changes. The Wiki is snapshot[1] again on 21 December at Midnight UTC for the Web-only release of the updated relnotes. That content is available for translation from CVS starting on 22 December by announcement to f-trans- list. Thanks - Karsten [1] That's right, I verbified that sucker. -- Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/ gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41 Content Services Fedora Documentation Project http://www.redhat.com/docs http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

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docs December 2005