[Fwd: Re: [Koha] Koha Documentation Project]

[Stephen Hedges]

I'm sharing parts of a message from Nick R., please feel free to comment.

Stephen

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [Koha] Koha Documentation Project
From:    etome-nsr at mail.korksoft.com
Date:    Thu, September 23, 2004 12:52 am
To:      "Stephen Hedges" <shedges at skemotah.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The original manual covered Sysadmins (mainly install, when parameters
were much simpler) and staff, and developers (we had a handy chunk of
why/how-stuff-is-done info  -- some architectural info for
presentation/explanation wouldn't hurt either -- never occured to me until
recently how hard it was to explain some of the webserver/perl/db
potential issues etc until I looked over some of the more typical
questions).

I like the idea of OPAC help (as Paul's nifty built in thing is
providing), but also think we could add (separately from a formal manual)
a getting started card (or at least a template) and signage.... the sort
of thing
left/displayed/handed out at a typical library.  This'd also give us the
chance to include the logo ... exposure is always good, no?  I think MJ
mentioned something like this also.

Also needed, and always a problem, is work re the FAQ and troubleshooting
info -- come to think of it, some newer hardware recommendations wouldn't
be amiss (CMSD I think gave us their original specs).  Thoughts?

I'm thinking MARC and associated questions will need special handling.
Possibly a "Cataloging In Brief" for the MARC-uncomfy... also, some wise
words on tags wouldn't kill us.

Ditto something on translating.

Any ideas on some sort of other name for the Breeding Farm?  It seems to
cause confusion, for one, and I had have a longtime sneaking suspicion it
doesn't work well when translated.

In the past (formal) docs have been in DocBook SGML/XML.... advantage here
is that it permits easy multi-format output, and is relatively easy to
translate the raw XML for other languages (we successfully handed the file
over to people with them returning translations of stuff between tags). 
And gives a nice, clean look and feel.  Opinions?

Nick
..reply offlist cause for some reason I needs must force a listadmin to
moderate my posts onto it at the moment(sigh).


-- 
Stephen Hedges
Skemotah Solutions, USA
www.skemotah.com  --  shedges at skemotah.com