Documentation

As part of the overall Drupal documentation efforts and the Knight Foundation grant that was awarded this year, I will be conducting a number of short surveys about documentation over the coming year. The first survey, about participation is now up. It is only 5 questions long and should only take a few minutes to complete. The survey will close on Monday, April 13. The results will be posted back to the Documentation group once the survey closes.

Sista söndagen i maj kommer Addison Berry från Lullabot hålla i en dokumentationssprint. Addison kommer vara i Sverige för konferensen DrupalCamp Stockholm 09 samt för att genomföra det uppdrag och förtroende som The Knight Foundation gav henne - att förbättra Drupals dokumentation.

Under sprinten kommer vi ge Drupals dokumentation mycket välbehövd uppmärksamhet och kärlek. Både engelsk- och svenskspråkig dokumentation ligger i fokus.

add1sun has issued her latest challenge, and we're going to take her up on it. Come and join us for a documentation sprint (and DrupalCon reunion of sorts!) at our office in Takoma Park, or via IRC if you can't make it in person. Beer and soda will be provided.

Office:
7040 Carroll Ave., Suite 3
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Phone: 301.920.0552

There has been a small group of people looking at how to use Advanced help in Drupal 6 (and the new help system in Drupal 7) to add documentation about Drupal right into a site. Last week Adam Moore (redndahead) and a small team of sprinters worked on screenshot madness with the idea that we will eventually get this sorted out. I have had a proof of concept module sitting around for a while on my desktop and now that we really seem to be getting momentum, and I inexplicably woke up at 3:30 am this morning, I finally gave it a good look over, changed some stuff and committed a very, very barebones module to CVS. This should let people be able to play with the concept on their own sites to make it more real while we figure out exactly how we want to organize it, standards we need, etc. It also gives us something tangible to make patches for and use for testing out other advanced things we need to do, like syncing it with Drupal.org handbook pages. So, here are the important bits:

The March docs challenge is now up - better late than never! This month we are going to try to make things spiffy by applying the new, updated style guide to the handbook.

I'll be working on it myself and hanging out in IRC from 7-8 pm EDT (4 pm PDT) each Monday evening for the rest of March. I encourage everyone to dig in whenever they have time, even if it is only 15-30 minutes every so often and, if you are an IRC kinda person, please hang out in #drupal-docs to help answer questions.

If you are in the DC area during Drupalcon, make sure you come to the Documentation Sprint on Saturday, March 7, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. you can read more about it on the Drupalcon site: http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/documentation-sprint

Here is the IRC log of the February 19 meeting and a short summary is below: http://pastebin.com/f16e96f31

Zee Doodle has spoken. We'll meet on Thursday, Feb. 19 from 2 - 3 p.m. EST (19:00 GMT, 11 a.m. PST) for one hour in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on Freenode.

Mark Boulton gave us an editorial guide for the redesign that is just around the corner (like within a month or so). The editorial guide covers all of the text on D.o so we need to review it, discuss and decide the best course of action to implement it. You can read the guide here: http://infrastructure.drupal.org/drupal.org-style-guide/editorial.html . Please talk about this and ask questions on the mailing list prior to the IRC meeting to hash things out. This will be a major task for us to tackle in the coming months (maybe even a Drupalcon sprint project / March doc challenge) so let's hammer on it a bit and be ready.

We have quite a few things cooking but a big thing on the horizon is the d.o redesign. That horizon is approaching quickly. Mark Boulton gave us an editorial guide for the new site. We need to review it, discuss and decide the best course of action to implement it. You can read the guide here: http://infrastructure.drupal.org/drupal.org-style-guide/editorial.html

I put up the February Docs challenge on my blog over a week ago. This month we talked about cleaning up the comments in the handbook. We've already had a really good response and we are chopping through the list.

This month I'll be working on the queue and hanging out in IRC from 9-10 pm EST (6 pm PST) each Tuesday evening for the month of February. I encourage everyone to dig in whenever they have time, even if it is only 15-30 minutes every so often and, if you are an IRC kinda person, please hang out in #drupal-docs to help answer questions.

Drupal n'Go

During times of recession and job losses it's always useful to develop a new skill or two. DERI based in the IDA Business park is holding a Drupal Ireland event. This event is taking place on Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th April and the event will run from 10am to 5pm both days. Registration is free. You can sign-up for this event below.

We'll meet on IRC in #drupal-docs for one hour in Sunday, January 18 at 2 pm EST (11 am PST, 19:00 GMT). Note that this meeting will start right after the regularly scheduled January "challenge hour" for that day.

Agenda:
Announcements
Issue queue and monthly challenges
Help system in core

Hey all, now that the holidays are winding down, let's kick off the new docs year with a quick meeting to get back on track. I have a Doodle set up to pick a date/time: http://www.doodle.com/participation.html?pollId=9g5emhds789nskhp

I'd also like to discuss setting up a "regular" meeting time since it seems that the Doodle often comes back with the same general preference and I'd like to have at least one meeting a month this year.

For 2009, I'm setting up monthly "Docs challenges" which I invite everyone to join in on. For the month of January I want to do a bit of house-cleaning on the documentation issue queue. I've got a blog post up on my personal blog for the details: http://rocktreesky.com/docs-challenge-january-tending-queue. If you wanted to jump in but were never quite sure how/where/what, feel free to stop by on IRC or leave comments on my blog post.

I'll be working on the queue and hanging out in IRC from 1-2pm EST (10 am PST, 18:00 GMT) each weekend day for the month of January. That means on the following January dates: (削除) 3, 4, (削除ここまで) 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31.

This is a summary of the IRC meeting held December 18. The IRC log is available here: http://pastebin.com/f57aa5c9e

**Announcements
- The KDI sprint funding is pending so I'm starting to plan doc sprints for next year at camps around the world. If folks are aware of camps being planned, please keep me in the loop for a potential sprints.

• Re: the OG vs mailing list conversation, Moshe is open to tieing the two together but none of the current solutions are solid. I'll be getting more info on what's needed and who might help in the next few weeks.

The Doodle has spoken. Next meeting is Thursday, December 18 at noon EST (17:00 GMT, 9 a.m. PST).

We will meet for one hour in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the FreeNode network and discuss:

Announcements
Status on Theme guide reorg
More Getting Started org discussion
Talk about redesign status
Discuss the new help system in core issues

Let's get together for a docs meeting this week to catch up on things before the holidays overtake us all. :-)

Here is the Doodle to vote for a time: http://doodle.com/34ap6e6y24t7isv6

We will meet for one hour in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the FreeNode network. Please vote on Doodle by Wednesday, Dec. 17 (tomorrow) midnight GMT (7pm EST, 4pm PST).

Agenda:
Announcements
Status on Theme guide reorg
More Getting Started org discussion
Talk about redesign status
Discuss the new help system in core issues

We should start to create a style guideline for the help system. This would help to make the help files consistent in look and feel. I have started a wiki page here (削除) http://groups.drupal.org/node/17300 (削除ここまで)

Hopefully we can discuss how each part should look here and lay it out on the wiki.

Edit: Wiki page removed look at the other pages posted below.

Drupal 7 will (hopefully) see the introduction of a new and completely overhauled help system (read: starting from scratch).
However, this mean that all documentation must be re-written.

This is not a job for one person! We need everyone to pitch in and help (no pun intended). If everyone can write two (2) pages, then we'll be very well off.

The kind people at the Help System group on groups.drupal.org have assembled a workflow for you to take part in. Here's how to write a help page for a module:

1. Log in here. If you don't already have an account, you can log in with YOUR_DRUPAL.ORG_USERNAME@drupal.org as your usename and your drupal.org password as your password
2. Navigate your browser here to start your new wiki page.
3. Choose "Drupal Documentation Task" for the "Group categories" vocabulary; and
4. Choose the name of the module for which you are writing documentation for the "Help topic module" vocabulary.
5. Fill in the title and the body to those that you wish to appear on your help page
6. Be sure to adhere to the guidelines

If everyone can do two (2) of these, we'll have all the help pages in core done in a matter of days. And guess who it starts with? You!

If you would like to edit an existing page, simply go to the Help System group, find the page along the left, click on it, and click the edit tab.

We need to make sure that we have a clear, complete Getting Started guide for Drupal 6, along the same lines as the Drupal 5 guide. We are currently discussing how to approach this. Originally we were just going to duplicate the D5 guide. We should have an approach and start implementation by Monday, November 24.