[FM Discuss] Hi folks

[Gregory Pittman]

On 01/02/2018 06:36 PM, M R wrote:
> Hi Greg (and whomever else):
> 
> 
> Thanks.  One of the follow-up questions I had is about the relationship
> between a given Floss documentation project and the 'official'
> documentation supported by that software's own organization.  Two
> examples (since I happen to be familiar with these tools): Audacity and
> Blender.  Both of these organizations have documentation sites (online
> manuals, wikis, tutorial pages) that are far more detailed and
> comprehensive (not to mention more current to latest releases) than the
> respective Floss doc projects.  I'd add the same for GIMP, actually. So
> on the one hand, this offers a great deal of scope for adding more
> detail, additional chapters etc to the relevant Floss books.  On the
> other hand, it somewhat begs the question of why we'd be doing this in
> the first place?  Some of the Floss doc projects I've seen are not
> specific to a particular technology, or focus on some niche use of that
> technology, so in those cases they're clearly not duplicating other doc
> efforts elsewhere.  But when it comes to basic user manuals on tools
> that are already very richly documented....I am just curious about who
> is reading the Floss documentation vs the official documentation.  For
> me personally, Floss is promising as a way to build up a technical
> writing portfolio, so I'm happy to have the opportunity to add a few
> chapters to the Blender or Audacity or GIMP books, or indeed maybe write
> a whole manual for Unity3D, which is an open-source tool I know pretty
> well and not yet represented on Floss.  But I do have to wonder who
> might actually *read* such docs, as opposed to simply going to the
> makers' own documentation.  
> 
> 
> I'd be interested in answers from anyone on the list.   It's clear that
> the original Floss project in the late aughts had an important place in
> open-source documentation, esp in Dutch and other non-English European
> languages.  10 years on, I'm not as certain.  But I'm very open to being
> convinced.
> 

I'm hoping there will be plenty of answers other than mine. To some
extent, flossmanuals fills a need where no good manuals exist. Beyond
that, I've seen a number of comprehensive manuals associated with
projects that are hard to absorb as a new user. There may be a need for
a particular point of view. Part of what you need to decide is whether
you think that something you're working on fills a need.

Personally, I'm involved with the Scribus project. There is an online
manual that comes with it, a wiki, and Christoph Schäfer and I wrote
what's been dubbed the "Official Manual", which is/was a physical book,
and it cost money to purchase. Meanwhile there was a group of French
speakers who got together and wrote a flossmanual, Scribus. I liked the
approach, focusing on taking a user through one or more projects with
Scribus, so I translated it into English for flossmanuals.

One might argue that there never are too many manuals, though I would
say that each should justify its existence. Also, existing manuals
become dated. The one that Christoph and I wrote in 2009 is now in many
ways outmoded by new developments in Scribus.

Greg