ALSA documentation project?

ALSA documentation project?

[Kevin Conder]

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.

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!

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.
4. Never switch documentation standards without discussing it first.
5. Put a responsible person in charge of coordinating the submissions,
tasks, and volunteers.
6. Recruit volunteers and delegate tasks.
7. Take time to answer the volunteer's technical questions. 
8. Treat the volunteers with respect.


=====
-- kwconder at yahoo dot com

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Re: ALSA documentation project?

[Mark Constable]

On Friday 25 October 2002 16:16, Kevin Conder wrote:
> Abramo Bagnara <abramo.bagnara@libero.it> wrote:
> >Documentation has not been written for lack of funding and lack of
> >volunteers.

Maybe Abramo meant "funded volunteers" ? Maybe not, but
then with one short response like that it's a bit hard
to tell.

> As a frustrated former documentation volunteer, here is my advice:

I, and I'm sure a _lot_ of other people, are just as
frustrated as hell with the state of ALSA. It's Ok
for those with the time and dedication to dig deep
and hard but for the "rest of us" it's generally been
a right royal pain dealing with ALSA.

Two points to consider: I set up that Wiki from similar
levels of frustration with the lack of documentation
and you are more than welcome to leave ANY input on that
server... also, I feel, one of the main obsticles holding
back even wider adoption of ALSA is the lack of not only
documentation (Patrick Shirkey has done a great job of
plugging holes) but the difficulty of the non-English
speaking core developers struggling to relate to the
rest of us via these lists. It's almost a non-event
beyond purely tech/code issues.

Jaraslov, Abramo and Takashi... you guys pump bigtime
at keeping the codebase and ALSA rolling along but there
is a distinct lack of leadership and direction... most
likely because of the language barriers, I presume. I
am not slagging on you 3 guys and I do not know what
the right answers are but I can see that no one in any
leadership capacity is actively outlining any coordination
and direction "for the rest of us".

--markc




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Re: ALSA documentation project?

[Takashi Iwai]

At Mon, 28 Oct 2002 21:04:45 +1000,
Mark Constable wrote:
> 
> Two points to consider: I set up that Wiki from similar
> levels of frustration with the lack of documentation
> and you are more than welcome to leave ANY input on that
> server... also, I feel, one of the main obsticles holding
> back even wider adoption of ALSA is the lack of not only
> documentation (Patrick Shirkey has done a great job of
> plugging holes) but the difficulty of the non-English
> speaking core developers struggling to relate to the
> rest of us via these lists. It's almost a non-event
> beyond purely tech/code issues.

that's true.  for me, writing documentation means that it costs far
longer time than writing codes although the output quality would be
worse.
(well, the real reason is that we (at least i) are "geeks" and love
 to write codes but not documents :)


Takashi


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Re: ALSA documentation project?

[Takashi Iwai]

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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