GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 91865
We need a GNOME 2 FAQ
Last modified: 2006-08-28 08:11:10 UTC
We have a GNOME 1.2 FAQ on www.gnome.org. We really should have had a 1.4 FAQ too but I never did one. Now we definitely need a GNOME 2.0 FAQ. I would suggest the same structure as the 1.2 one, only: Installing GNOME: -- update system requirements, add all the build-scripts, (I sent a post to linuxchix which could be updated to be correct: it's at http://mailman.linuxchix.org/pipermail/techtalk/2002-August/015489.html) find the Solaris and HP stuff. Compilation issues: order needs adding to. db2html question should be removed I think? may need to mention adding SGML_CATALOG_FILE variable though. DocBook setup has changed, Problems section should be rewritten from scratch. I would suggest retaining the kernel/X/GNOME split though. Further resources: lose gnotices mention, it's going away. mailing lists need checking. And keep the credits straight in the docbook, it makes it *much* easier to reuse parts subsequently. I have a collection of stuff sent to gnomefaq alias and stuff I saved as "needs adding" for anyone who wants it. I will do this eventually if no-one else does, but feel free to assign it to yourself :)
Just to keep this alive, I'll mention that after the old one was removed from www.gnome.org for being horribly misleading, I found someone linking to an even earlier copy of it in my referrer logs this month. I had quite forgotten that I had had a really early draft on my website for discussion before it went into CVS originally. But we definitely need an updated one: the person linking was trying to use the FAQ for 1.2 to solve compile problems for 2.6. I would like to get this done for 2.8. I'll have a look at what's needed.
The faq stuff is actually still referenced in gnomeweb-wml, but it's built from elsewhere (I can find that if you want). It might be good to have per-version FAQs as part of the release notes... Would a 'global' FAQ still be useful? I guess it could cover community oriented things, rather than, "I can't change blah setting" software stuff.
You suggested a more maintainable structure in bug #117796. I think there are questions which are global in that bug: "what is the foundation?" "who decides what?" perhaps even "what is a freetype and why should I care?" (there is a splendid start at what the different package names are/do on gnome-love atm, in fact. Perhaps just link to that :) So yeah, I was thinking global for "about Gnome" sort of stuff and release- specific for a lot of the rest. One thing I am not sure about is how to deal with things which are specific to two or three releases but which are not general enough to go into the global section. I think something like this should work: /pathname/wherever/faq/2.2/ : the full answer /pathname/wherever/faq/2.4/ : "unchanged since 2.2: follow this link to read it" /pathname/wherever/faq/2.6/ : "unchanged since 2.2: follow this link to read it" ...yes? is it worth merging or sticking a depends between this bug and #117796 ?
For the release-specific stuff, can we just put those in the release notes instead? One disadvantage is that it's more distributed for writers... Hrm. Oh, hey, this is precisely what the other bug was about! :-) So, if we do as the other bug suggests, we should probably think further about where the global document would be, how we'd publish it, etc. I remember thinking about how difficult it would be to have a single centralised 'FAQ', given that a lot of what we'd be answering is pretty well distributed. Before we merge the other bug into this one, perhaps we should figure out what we need. IRC? :-)
Hi there, I guess this bug can be considered obsolete by now. If you are still missing a page or some kind of information in wgo let us know and we will integrate it to the wgo revamp plans - http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb