It is absolutely needed. Lot of people has asked for it before in the past.
I think that not only create the documents is needed but ship them as a package in the GNU language speaking. Probably it can be a good idea to prepare a separated git repository (synfig-docs) so it can have its own releases and commits. I can take charge on prepare a new one in the sf repository if we decide that. Although wiki is in continous improvement, release a snapshot of the documentation implies a task, so that’s why I think it should be a release scheme.
Also I wish to have the opinion/thoughts of pixelgeek as we need the package to be bundled too for windows.
Doubts:
is the PDF the best format?
Is the PDF the only format?
Will someone in charge on decide when a release can be done and do the release?
How does other projects handle that feature?
PDF:
As for the moment I see that it is the easiest & fastest to use PDF for a beginners guide.
Zelgadis can create one out of the wiki.
PDF for a guide is ok for me, it is not a help function anyhow… and it works on all platforms.
Versioning:
For now: I do not like to have much extra efforts for the offline doc. We need all resources to work on the wiki.
To move the snapshot to GIT and then do some hand work additionally might be ok.
Later: versioning the docs in GIT sounds good, but it needs some extra thoughts on how to combine that with the open development of docs in a wiki…
I think we should stick to wiki to minimize the efforts.
Pdf looks like the best choice for offline reading, because we can use it to get printed books via online publishing services.
I’m taking responsibility to decide about docs release and release the docs if no one objects.
I suggest to replace last one (Quick Overview/Interface) with Flower Animation Tutorial. Because Quick Overview/Interface is the start of “new saga” - detailed description of synfig’s components. Flower Animation is advanced tutorial, more complex than “Animation basics” and it’s good conclusion for “Adding Layers” and “Creating shapes” chapters.
Ok, I think we can discuss very quickly here in Forum as soon as you think it’s ready. Would like to have one responsible, but still open to the team to comment, just to make sure we don’t overlook any important things.
Ok, but let’s finally decide as soon as we have the docs ready.
hello…i have just finished making one single pdf from linuxmultimediastudio wiki pages i have downloaded
i have converted each page to a pdf then merged all pages in 1 dopcument
i uploaded it so that people can use it offline …
i am thinking of doing the same with synfig…
what is your opinion???
thanks
There is a team working on improve the documentation and Zelgadis is working on automatic creation of PDF files from the manual. Maybe you can join them to work in the same direction. Please review the posts in this forum related to that issue. Create a single pdf for a entire wiki is not bad if you’re in a hurry. Our aim is create well formatted and clean manual pfd documents using a wiki to pdf converser and not directly a html to pdf converter.
-G