Re: ALSA documentation project?

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

At Thu, 24 Oct 2002 23:16:06 -0700 (PDT),
Kevin Conder wrote:
> 
> Abramo Bagnara <abramo.bagnara@libero.it> wrote:
> >Documentation has not been written for lack of funding and lack of
> >volunteers.
> 
> Well, I've come foward a few times as a documentation volunteer and
> have been frustrated at every turn. The first time I volunteered, the
> ALSA team suddenly switched from the DocBook standard (which I am
> familiar with) to doxygen. Also, the alsa-doc mailing list was taken
> off-line.
> 
> The next time I volunteered, a member of the ALSA team blew me off. He
> refused to answer my questions directly and told me to ask them on the
> *alsa-users* mailing list instead! I felt disrespected and definitely
> not a member of the ALSA team.

oh, please don't take such an answer seriously.  and i would apologize
if it were me (i don't remember it, though).

but, one thing is also true - one will get better answers on a ML than
writing directly to the personal address, because the questions and
answers are reviewed publicly and eventually there will be better
chances that other people are involved.
such a discussion should be on alsa-docs ML, not alsa-users, though.


> The last time I volunteered, my hard work was attacked on this list as
> being "mechanical". Then a Wiki was implemented and my work was thrown
> out. That was the last straw!

no, alsa-doc cvs tree itself exists, so it's not thrown out.
well, it's true that the old documents are no longer valid, because of
so many changes since the time of 0.5.x.


> So I'm working on the Alternative Csound Reference Manual
> (http://www.kevindumpscore.com/docs/csound-manual/) these days. 
> 
> As a frustrated former documentation volunteer, here is my advice:
> 
> 1. Identify the documentation tasks that need to be done and
> maintained.
> 2. Start an ALSA documentation project.
> 3. Restart the alsa-docs mailing list.

agreed.
if you (and other people) still have interest, we can create a new ML
for documentation (and open a cvs tree if necessary), as we did
before.

> 4. Never switch documentation standards without discussing it first.

i don't believe this will happen again.
(iirc, there were discussions about this change.  but this was
 perhaps only on alsa-devel ML.)

> 5. Put a responsible person in charge of coordinating the submissions,
> tasks, and volunteers.
> 6. Recruit volunteers and delegate tasks.

i would like to take this job, but, i myself will have little time to
write actually something.

> 7. Take time to answer the volunteer's technical questions. 
> 8. Treat the volunteers with respect.

yes, that's a must.


ciao,

Takashi


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