[FM Discuss] and the year begins

[adam hyde]

hey,



> 
> worth mentioning the PDF rendering under Linux with Evince looks a
> little crunchy. the titles are smooth though:
> 
>   http://julianoliver.com/tmp/blender-FM-shot.png
> 
> i'll try a few other PDF readers and report back. Evince is usually fine.


ah, interesting. Great, I will look into this.

> 
> > The above is a link to the Blender manual prepared using the python
> > import script for print-on-demand. If you look at it in a PDF viewer it
> > will seem like there a lot of 'empty' pages, but remember - the layout
> > is for print. Never-the-less I think it makes a good PDF.
> > 
> > I am very interested in feedback about the layout and look and feel
> > (designed by Lotte). I'm also interested in the way the credits are
> > dealt with in the front of the pdf/book (Julian - any comments?)
> > 
> 
> it's a tricky one. saying it was /collaboratively/ produced isn't quite
> true. i wrote that manual, with the exception of the pages on how to
> install Blender. you, FM, invited me to do precisely this.


very good points. It teases out some very interesting issues. We have a
number of manuals that are very much collaboratively written and some
that are written by pretty much one person - PureData and Blender are
very good examples of the later.

> 
> formatting was improved, typos fixed and some clarifications made later, 
> which i suppose you could describe as a 'collaboration' of sorts.
> 
> if it's better - for whatever reason - for you to call it a
> collaboration then so be it. in truth though it does feel a little weird 
> at this end.

Your feelings in this are very important and I am very happy you are
being so frank. My motivation for putting the credits this way was to
credit you for the work more than through the credits listed at the back
of the manual. I wanted to find a way where we might consider lifting
the profile of the author(s) by having the names listed in the front
rather than at the credits section at the back where the credits and
copyright notices are in the online and pdf versions of the manual. 

In this case - with the Blender manual which is primarily written by one
person (Julian), it seems to me now to come out a little oddly as the
work of the other contributors are also appropriate to include but this
in effect diminishes the role Julian has had in writing the manual. 

I had considered using a sort of 'font weighting' as is used in tagging
sites, so the more someone contributed to a manual the bigger the the
font size for their name, but this seemed to me to be a little tacky. 

So, I'm up for suggestions on how to deal with this. I hope you are not
offended Julian by the credits in the manual. It hasn't been distributed
and is posted here for review precisely for this kind of discussion. 


> 
> you could just say 'First Draft: <author name>' and then list all the
> other people that contributed to it, perhaps even with their
> contributions listed in a similarly general fashion. maybe that'd be
> clearer and feel a little more motivating for others to write manuals
> for FM in future.
> Derek: if i was to correct something in the PD manual would you be cool
> with us both being 'collaborators' on the PD manual you'd largely
> written?
> attribution is a difficult problem, in some senses has broader social
> implications. why quantitatively assess contributions? isn't every
> contribution to be valued and encouraged as such? 
> 
> while being ideal, i believe this normalisation doesn't work; it's
> important not to underestimate how much the belief a person will be
> recognised for their contribution motivates them to contribute in the
> first instance.

Yeah, very good points...I'm going to ponder a little on these. Very
interested in how others feel about these issues. 

adam




-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net