Re: Why? -- "A Modest Proposal"
On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> wrote:
> There exist SOC <Summer of Code> projects to encourage/mentor fledgling
> programmers.
> Considering the state of documentation, esp man pages, why no SOD <Summer of
> Documentation> projects for potential tech writers.
>
> In many areas, nerds are considered illiterate. I can see SOD projects as a
> vehicle to encourage technically oriented teens to hone their composition
> skills. Attempting to edit existing man pages might be a good starting
> point. It would obviously require mentors with an atypical mixture of skill
> sets.
>
One side note. IMHO man pages/info pages have a huge barrier of entry.
You have to learn a new language to write one and that can be
discouraging to some. Ideally, a documentation developer would just
focus on the content and does not spend much time on the meta aspects
of documentation (ex:- typesetting/formatting etc.,). From this
aspect, a wiki is an ideal way to document something... but may be
there are better tools out there that I am unaware of.
thanks
raju
--
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi | http://raju.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Blog
Reply to: