Re: Some thoughts on beat writing

----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul W. Frields" <stickster(a)gmail.com&gt; To: <fedora-docs-list(a)redhat.com&gt; Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 7:19 PM Subject: Re: Some thoughts on beat writing > I think there is a better way -- feeding package information > to beats is simply not a good one. We had to change a lot > of the Amateur Radio beat for that very reason. Simply > listing the results of 'yum info' or 'yum search', or producing > a listing of changed version numbers, and calling that release > notes devalues the process a bit. Oh absolutely. The yum info stuff merely gives the beat writer some view into what's there. Once he recognizes the version change, the beat writer would then go to the project website (also listed in the yum info), review the upstream's release notes (where available), make a judgement as to whether they really needed comment, and then devise the release notes entry. I do think that the yum info is a good start for the "what's there" page that the release notes might point to. I do think the beat writer should, however, be encouraged to embellish the yum description. But at least it is a start. A nice summary should go into the release notes preceding the changes, but it should be very brief, perhaps one or two sentences.