docs December 2008

docs@lists.fedoraproject.org

37 participants
69 discussions

where to place bugzilla components
by Karsten Wade 15 Dec '08

15 Dec '08

As we begin to have more documents that have installable packages (beyond the release-notes and fedora-release-notes package), it might be confusing why we have apparently duplicate bugzilla components. What do you all think of this historical methodology? Would be nice to get a modern consensus so we can document how and why. As an example, we have the 'release-notes' component in the Fedora Documentation product on https://bugzilla.redhat.com. There is also the 'fedora-release-notes' package component in the Fedora product. The 'release-notes' component is for the upstream content. In that sense, *any* bugs reported against content should really be moved to that component; we probably have failed to do that until now. The 'fedora-release-notes' component is really for the package only. Because 'f-r-n' doesn't really break many things, it may not get many such bugs. Now that we can easily build RPM packages using Publican, we are likely to see more documents submitted as actual packages to be installable in Fedora. Then they show up under System > Documentation, etc. As a final confusing item, we have a Trac instance in the *real* upstream project, https://fedorahosted.org/release-notes. This issue tracker is strictly for the writing team(s) to coordinate work. So, a bug against 'f-r-n' may get moved to the 'r-n' component, then create one or more tickets in the upstream Trac. We could look at eliminating the Fedora Documentation component. What are the risks of doing that? Rewards seem to be -- simpler system, less confusion about where to file a bug. For the record, no one has ever reported confusion in where to file a Release Notes bug. People find one or the other component, probably don't know of the other, and file their bug. Since we haven't been moving bugs between components, most folks are probably not aware there are two similar-sounding bugzilla components. One approach is, we could look at completely eliminating the Fedora Documentation product. We would then move all of our content/upstream bugs to the individual Trac instances. This would require a package for each document, so it had a way to take bug reports via bugzilla under the regular Fedora product. Just like any other package works in Fedora. - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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Re: Some thoughts on beat writing
by Dale Bewley 15 Dec '08

15 Dec '08

----- "Karsten Wade" <kwade(a)redhat.com> wrote: > So, yes, there is a novel idea here -- a permanent beat page on the > wiki that has: > > * Commands to use to get more info about packages (yum info, rpm -q > --changelog) > > * List of packages for that section > > * Programmatically generated changes between FN and FN-1 I hadn't pondered digging into the sqlite files. I found koji to be helpful for finding the version delta of packages across (non-EOL) distributions. My messy hack is here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DaleBewley#Virtualization_Release_Notes * pkgs.in contains CSV package name, relnotes URL * dist.in contains f9, f10, etc #!/bin/bash grep -v '^#' pkgs.in | while read line; do grep -v '^#' dist.in | while read dist; do pkg=`echo $line | awk '{print $1}'` notes=`echo $line | awk '{print $2}'` ver=`koji latest-pkg "$dist" "$pkg" | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}'` echo "$pkg, $dist, $ver, $notes" done done I then read the upstream relnotes for each release since the last Fedora distribution to produce a summary of changes for the Fedora relnotes. John mentioned a page to augment a beat for tracking changes. That may be an appropriate use of the discussion tab on an article. As a new beat writer, I used my personal page for that. I think a page of tips like this will be very helpful.

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Linux Security Guide
by Eric Christensen 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

Just FYI, the Security Guide[1] has been converted to xml with the next step of being integrated into the Linux Security Guide that is being developed by Mike Hideo and others. A list[2] has been established for this project. I'll be working on developing and converting the draft portions of the Security Guide[3] into xml so they can be incorporated down the road. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security_Guide [2] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/security-guide-list [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/CryptoGuide Eric

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Self-Introduction: Basil Mohamed Gohar
by Basil Mohamed Gohar 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

Greetings, Fedora Documentation list! My name is Basil Mohamed Gohar, and I'm keen to join the Fedora Documentation project per encouragement from Karsten Wade. What follows, hopefully, fulfills the requirements of the Self-Introduction for joining the group, but should also give you a bit of an idea of me. I am a graduate of The Ohio State University with a bachelors degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering (it's only one major despite covering two subjects), class of the Summer of 2004. I currently work as a web developer for a small consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio whose primary business relates to virtual schooling, including homeschooling & charter school programs. My personal experience with Fedora started with Fedora Core 5, when I installed it on my computer just to play & explore a GNU/Linux operating system. Though I'd been a support of free software since I understood what it was, I had not yet been ready to take the plunge & commit myself to it. That experience changed it for me, and by the time Fedora Core 6 was released, I had switched to using it as my main system. Prior to using Fedora, though, I had been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 & 4 on two servers that I leased for hosting my own web sites since 2004 & 2005, respectively, so I grew familiar with a command-line *nix environment through managing those servers. I am what some would call a free software fundamentalist, because I believe free software is fundamentally better due to the principle that is free as in freedom. I have had some experience writing documentation for projects & programs before, but nothing as large-scale as Fedora. I am a native speaker of the English language, having been born & raised in the US my whole life. I tend to be picky about grammar where I notice a mistake, and I am pedantic when it comes to ensuring what has been stated is factually correct. I consider myself to be verbose, but clear, when I write, but that is a judgment best left for others. ;) I have done a little documentation work for the Fedora Unity project, but that stalled when I had to move on to other projects at that time. I have been using computers since I was very young, as there has always been a computer of some kind available in our homes. Being a developer, I suppose that I am an "expert" computer using on most platforms, with the exception of Mac OS, as I do not own any Apple hardware. As I mentioned earlier, I am a web developer by trade & hobby. I work primarily with PHP & MySQL. I would describe myself as a PHP guru, but I wouldn't disagree if others claimed I was. ;) I have been programming for over 6 years, having taught myself PHP after learning basic Perl to parse HTML tables to convert them to Microsoft Excel documents (yuck!). I was also encouraged by my desire to write my own website code for listing files for people to download. I feel I am an excellent match for the Fedora Documentation project because I believe that free software is fundamentally superior, I communicate well, and I want to contribute to something that will benefit people & make free software easier for people to use by having quality resources available to them. My GPG fingerprint follows: pub 1024D/25DB6E43 2008-12-11 Key fingerprint = 29B4 52ED 2335 1948 652A 22BB 873C DA6A 25DB 6E43 uid Basil Mohamed Gohar (Basil's GPG key) <abu_hurayrah(a)hidayahonline.org> sub 2048g/7B467FE6 2008-12-11 I look forward to contributing more in the future, and I will follow-up with an idea I had which is what encouraged Karsten to prompt me to officially join the project in the first place. ________________________________________________________________________ Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah(a)hidayahonline.org www.basilgohar.com

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FDSCo Meeting 2008-12-10 Summary
by Karsten Wade 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

Attendees --------- Eric Christensen (Sparks) Paul W. Frields (stickster) John J. McDonuugh (jjmcd) Karsten Wade (quaid) Matthew Daniels (danielsmw) David Nalley (ke4qqq) Jared Smith (jsmith) Susan Lauber (laubersm) IRC Log ------- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:Docs_IRC_log_20081210 Agenda ------ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/SteeringCommittee/Meetings#Wedne… Summary ------- * Moving full work on helper documentation for Docs contributors; work to occur during https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_Holiday_Virtual_Hackfest * Page renaming for Docs pages underwork; help here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Wikibot_page_restructuring * User Guide work: * danielsmw and quaid to work on F8 User Guide wiki-only publishing next week, as per previous list discussion * During virtual hackfest: * F9 content to XML * Convert F9 content to F10 on wiki * Collaboration for CMS via mailing list and here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CMS_solution_for_Fedora_Project_websites * Current task is to get a list of all viable CMS that provide the MUST and preferred SHOULD items * Goal to train $EVERYONE at Saturday FUDCon BarCamp session on how to publish via CMS * Updates to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_admin_tasks_for_experienced_con… * Toolchain conversions to take a virtual hackfest day * Publican migration how to written during virt.hackfest, using install-guide(?) as an example * ALL documents MUST have a Lead Writer, and SHOULD have a team * By 15 Dec. or they get on a short-list * Last pitch at FUDCon, whatever doesn't have resources is dropped for F11 * Lead Writers here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_content_tasks_for_experienced_co… * Team lists here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_content_tasks_for_new_contributo… * quaid removed himself from covering documents as a Lead Writer; was a temporary F10 leadership convenience but not a precedent -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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FDSCo Meeting 2008-12-10 IRC log
by Karsten Wade 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

In HTML (via the new irclog2html package with the '-s mediawiki' target option): https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:Docs_IRC_log_20081210 Raw text log attached. -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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CMS progress
by Karsten Wade 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

If you are interested in helping Docs find a CMS solution to replace http://docs.fedoraproject.org ... https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CMS_solution_for_Fedora_Project_websites We're trying to list all possible solutions by 19 Dec., then vet that to a short, short list by 21 Dec. From there, we are run some test instances over the following few weeks. - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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Writing teams
by Karsten Wade 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

To make our lives sane, this project needs to work only on content that people are actually committed to doing. In other words, there are no release notes unless people want to write them. First step is getting a lead writer for each document. If no one is willing to lead, then we need to drop that guide from our production list for Fedora 11. Here is the list: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_content_tasks_for_experienced_co… Once there is a lead, that person needs to work with all of us on recruiting. That person should *not* expect to do all the work, and in fact doesn't even need to be a good writer or editor; this is more project management work. If a team wants to act as a collective without a formal lead, that team needs to put together a plan that will work, then bring it here for discussion/approval/etc. A single person can lead more than one guide, just be aware of the workload. - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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meeting 10 Dec 1900 UTC
by Karsten Wade 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/SteeringCommittee/Meetings#Agend… * Status of helper-docs ** Possible some work on that and page moving * Plans for Fedora 11 cycle ** FUDCon targets (CMS, Wiki) * Go over task table * All other business Yes, we are sticking with the time in UTC. If there is still a conflict with other people who have chosen to move their meeting for DST, then we'll meet in #fedora-docs. cheers - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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Re: Some thoughts on beat writing
by John J. McDonough 09 Dec '08

09 Dec '08

Paul I appreciate the feedback. I do have a few thoughts on specific ways things might be made better for new beat writers, but I also imagined that if other beat writers engaged in the conversation, better ideas would emerge. A little shooting from the hip: 1) Seed the beats, especially the untouched beats, with the information available from yum. This can be done programatically, and I would be willing to work on that, but I suspect that there may be a better way, and in any case, the mapping of packages to beats is something that probably needs to be easily editable, and that raises some issues I haven't reconciled. 2) Provide some relatively automatic way for a beat writer to know what has changed within his domain without grazing all 11K packages. I will do this for myself for F11, whether I can do it in a way that is appropriate in a production environment, I'm less sure. (I'm a big fan of really grody hacks). 3) Provide new beat writers with an assigned mentor, preferably someone with at least some familiarity with the beat content, as well, of course, as the process. I'm pretty sure other beat writers out there have much better ideas but they are keeping their mouths shut. Perhaps I should have waited a few more days. Indeed, with the holiday fast upon us, many of the stateside beat writers are probably already headed off to their turkeys, leaving their laptops alone and lonely over the long weekend. On the other hand, perhaps some will emerge from their tryptophan haze in a talkative mood! --McD

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docs December 2008