[D-community-discuss] NewbieDOC documentation project

[Chris Lale]

Holger Levsen wrote:
> [...]
>> I have been involved with the Debian
>> NewbieDOC documentation project (http://newbiedoc.berlios.de) for a
>> number of years. [...]
> Do you also have it translated to other languages? 

Only the oldest documents at SourceForge have translations. There are no 
translators left in the project.

> How 
> up to date is it? 

It varies. If an article arises out of a post in the debian-user list, 
it is sometimes finished before the thread is. Some articles are old.

> How many people work on it? 

I am the only developer left in the project and writing articles in the 
stable format (wikitext but based on DocBook). Other people (registered 
and anonymous) contribute free-form articles too. It is difficult to 
find new developers. Perhaps there are people interested in 
debian-community who might like to get involved?

> Is it completly wiki-based?
>   

People stopped writing SGML DocBook articles, so the project moved to 
MediaWiki which has been more successful. We had to move to BerliOS 
because SourceForge's security will not allow the MediaWiki software to 
run. MediaWiki syntax is very easy - in fact, you don't even need any. 
There is a built-in editor too. Anyone can contribute but there are 
advantages to registering. Stable articles are protected from editing, 
but each article is linked to its own discussion page for comments, 
amendments etc. Contributions are accepted under the GFDL without 
restrictions and so conform to the DFSG. A few articles are dual 
licenced GFDL/GPL eg because this makes it possible to include material 
in other documentation projects that are GPL only (eg Debian Reference).

There is a newbiedoc Debian package, but the developer is doing a PhD so 
newer articles have not been included.

Its easy to create or modify and article. Instructions are at the top of 
the page http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Articles .

-- 
Chris.