Dev - Any interest in End-User and other documentation?

[davidnwelton]

> I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz documentation, but something certainly is...

DocBook in subversion might work ok, but the learning curve is not an
easy one, and it's easy to get caught up in deciding what the right
markup is for something, rather than generating good content.
Confluence sounds more accessible, which is an advantage in getting
people involved.

> I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate tool for this.

IIRC, the ASF has some Confluence stuff set up, if you guys would
like, I can investigate.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[Ray Barlow]

David,

I did originally visit and register on the new Confluence site and I am
happy to help.

Are you thinking of creating a page somewhere that lists what
documentation pages need transferring and where they will end up? Then
people can dip in pick a page, put there name against it and start work,
basically a poor man's version control so we can keep from treading on
each others toes.

Ray


David E. Jones wrote:

>There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>
>There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>
>What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>
>I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>
>There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool.
>
>Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>
>So, a few questions:
>
>1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>
>I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>
>-David
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Dev mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>  
>

 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

Hi Ray, David, and all

>From comments from Florin (experienced Confluence user) it seems that a plan and
roles has to be made before any other task :

Quoting :
"A Confluence space (like any other Wiki based document repository) can be
easily transformed in a pile of mess if you're not carefully planning its
structure *before* letting the users contributing.
Also, plan carefully the roles and the permissions you want to use."

Jacques

> David,
>
> I did originally visit and register on the new Confluence site and I am
> happy to help.
>
> Are you thinking of creating a page somewhere that lists what
> documentation pages need transferring and where they will end up? Then
> people can dip in pick a page, put there name against it and start work,
> basically a poor man's version control so we can keep from treading on
> each others toes.
>
> Ray
>
>
> David E. Jones wrote:
>
> >There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the

proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site.
More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I
still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other
alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already
having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering
the software.
> >
> >There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a
small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply
migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
> >
> >What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to
help with it?
> >
> >I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k
to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem
to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about
it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
> >
> >There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content
management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't
matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices
are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that
Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the
content to another tool.
> >
> >Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to
another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever
does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and
on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc
site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
> >
> >So, a few questions:
> >
> >1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
> >2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other
sources?
> >3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain
this?
> >
> >I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone
will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use
Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very
simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and
pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off
images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.

> >
> >-David
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Dev mailing list
> >[hidden email]
> >http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
_______________________________________________
Dev mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[Daniel Kunkel]

Hi

Q.) Are you referring to wikalong? Or actually adding a help menu for
each screen on the backend?

The original idea had been for just one OFBiz documentation site that
wouldn't get too much traffic, since people would only be requesting
pages when they had a question on how to use a OFBiz page to find out
more about what a particular element did or how to do a particular task.

I hadn't seen wiki-along, and although that product would need to be
modified for our purposes so the same OFBiz backend sub-page would point
to the same entry regardless of what the top level domain was... wiki-
along offers a compelling possibility for an integrated help system.

The idea of allowing for a split page like that is intriguing, although
it would generate a lot more traffic, and I would think more users would
want to customize it for their company.

Permissions

I think we should shoot for a very open wiki permission system, at least
from the point of making it trivial for a new user to suggest/improve
content.

If we require more than a username/password to jump in and edit the
wiki, we'll lose a lot of valuable contributions from people who would
contribute but won't go through the hassle of waiting a day or two to
get permission first.

On the other side of the coin, however, is the wiki spam which will need
to be removed manually.

Does Confluence support processing new content in such a way that
approving changes would be easy?

Actually, a really cool feature would set the wiki to display the user's
latest changes to anyone requesting a page from the author's IP address,
but not to the rest of the world until a manager had approved the
change, perhaps by just returning the notification e-mail.

Thanks

Daniel



On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:34 -0700, Chris Howe wrote:

> Daniel,
>
> Are you referring to wikalong? Or actually adding a help menu for each
> screen on the backend?
>
> http://www.wikalong.org/
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Daniel Kunkel <[hidden email]>
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2006 12:15:46 AM
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Any interest in End-User and other
> documentation?
>
> Hi
>
> A while back someone came up with what I thought was a great idea for
> developing and integrating end user documentation right into OFBiz...
>
> Link the online instructions on how to use any particular function or
> page in OFBiz to help links that appear on that particular screen in
> OFBiz. So, if you were trying to fumble through your first product
> return, you could hit the help link and go to a documentation page
> describing the return process, and important notes.
>
> I think this could also be organized as a wiki type system, which
> would
> be especially great since I'm confident some end users would gladly
> help
> create high quality documentation.
>
> I think from a user's standpoint this would work well too, as the end
> users would immediately find the information they wanted most of the
> time.
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:54 -0600, David E Jones wrote:
> > Ruth, (and others reading in...),
> >
> > I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the
> best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz
> documentation, but something certainly is...
> >
> > I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an
> adequate tool for this.
> >
> > It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such
> things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to
> instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher
> level and link to details in other places.
> >
> > Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the
> documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see
> that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers
> some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so
> far, is very much how-to oriented.
> >
> > For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor
> that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window
> and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep
> in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving
> your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time
> you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
> >
> > Confluence also supports revision management and history
> automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
> >
> > -David
> >
> >
> > Ruth Hoffman wrote:
> > > David, Si:
> > > I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these
> discussions.
> > >
> > > IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool
> - one
> > > that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in
> DocBook
> > > format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence
> looks to
> > > me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki
> to
> > > Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the
> > > niceties of the tool.
> > >
> > > In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and
> displaying
> > > short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These
> snippets are
> > > like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know
> what
> > > island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the
> big
> > > picture or even how the islands may be related to one
> another.  What's
> > > really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how
> to do
> > > things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how
> to
> > > develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure,
> flow
> > > and logic, not just random content strung together using search
> tools,
> > > page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have
> tables of
> > > contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated
> with
> > > them as entire documents.
> > >
> > > One final thought - have you tried to use a browser
> based,  WYSIWYG
> > > editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not
> so
> > > much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines
> of text.
> > >
> > > Again, just my 2 cents.
> > >
> > > Ruth
> > > Si Chen wrote:
> > >
> > >> David,
> > >>
> > >> We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get
> some
> > >> clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
> > >> docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
> > >> incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
> > >>
> > >> Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
> > >> exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different
> people's
> > >> documentation.
> > >>
> > >> Si
> > >>
> > >> David E. Jones wrote:
> > >>  
> > >>
> > >>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week
> about the proposed new end-user and other document site using
> Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to
> the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using
> Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives
> mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already
> having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with
> administering the software.
> > >>>
> > >>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation
> managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the
> same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz
> wiki.
> > >>>
> > >>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in
> this enough to help with it?
> > >>>
> > >>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has
> paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for
> free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or
> perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like
> the approach?
> > >>>
> > >>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a
> different content management system because of different data
> structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the
> structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the
> OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a
> couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the
> content to another tool.
> > >>>
> > >>> Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the
> content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller
> skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what
> would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually
> moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz
> Confuence server.
> > >>>
> > >>> So, a few questions:
> > >>>
> > >>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
> > >>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from
> other sources?
> > >>> 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help
> maintain this?
> > >>>
> > >>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content
> it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required
> is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation
> for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work
> involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text
> editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading
> them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
> > >>>
> > >>> -David
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> _______________________________________________
> > >>> Dev mailing list
> > >>> [hidden email]
> > >>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>  
> > >>>    
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Dev mailing list
> > >> [hidden email]
> > >> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> > >>
> > >>  
> > >>
> > >  
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Dev mailing list
> > > [hidden email]
> > > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >  
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dev mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> --
> Daniel
>
> *-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-
> Have a GREAT Day!
>
> Daniel Kunkel           [hidden email]
> BioWaves, LLC           http://www.BioWaves.com
> 14150 NE 20th St. Suite F1
> Bellevue, WA 98007
> 800-734-3588    425-895-0050
> http://www.Apartment-Pets.com  http://www.Focus-Illusion.com
> http://www.Brain-Fun.com       http://www.ColorGlasses.com
> *-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>  _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[Florin T.PATRASCU (work)]

Daniel,

You wrote:

"Permissions

I think we should shoot for a very open wiki permission system, at least
from the point of making it trivial for a new user to suggest/improve
content."

Hmmm ... trust me, I learned the hard way that in the Wiki realm too much democracy ;) is not beneficial. My opinion is that if you want to have quality you *have* to have a good and an organized system of editing permissions. Editorial policies! Quality == Discipline ;)

A lot of Wiki systems are dying for being suffocated by inside noise. You don't want this to happen to OFbiz, especially if you have a chance to start fresh.

Also:
"If we require more than a username/password to jump in and edit the
wiki, we'll lose a lot of valuable contributions from people who would
contribute but won't go through the hassle of waiting a day or two to
get permission first."

Daniel, you know ... I believe that a valuable contributor knowing that he or she has something valuable to publish ... will wait few hours/days if he/she really wants to contribute. More than that, valuable contributions require time and personal/group effort, therefore if you spend your time and energy for something valuable, I am sure you'll not like to see it changed in a way you don't want (?!) or chopped by a frustrated user who believes your content is too ... I don't know how ... and he  will transform your contribution into a lame summary or something, let's say! "Hey .. is democracy" he will say!

A valuable contributor will *always* understand and obey to the editorial rules imposed by the system. It's in his own interest.

I am not suggesting here to impose some draconian editorial rules, most of the editors will do it for free and we all here respect that, but you have to have at least a Content Manager role and and a couple of Editors, if you really want to build the ... open Book of OFBiz!

None of the above roles are defined explicitly in Confluence, but you can easily simulate them by creating public and private spaces and so on. The confluence user list is also great if you guys are looking for advices before going live with Confluence.

Now, writing all these, I am thinking, did you guys looked at DRUPAL? Yeah, I know ... is PHP and so on, but we are not a Java religious fan-club here I hope. Correct? Anyways, from what I heard, DRUPAL is very well suited for editorial workflows so maybe you want to check it out.

... my other 2 cents
:) 

PS
sorry for my English:(

Daniel Kunkel wrote:

Hi

Q.) Are you referring to wikalong? Or actually adding a help menu for
each screen on the backend?

The original idea had been for just one OFBiz documentation site that
wouldn't get too much traffic, since people would only be requesting
pages when they had a question on how to use a OFBiz page to find out
more about what a particular element did or how to do a particular task.

I hadn't seen wiki-along, and although that product would need to be
modified for our purposes so the same OFBiz backend sub-page would point
to the same entry regardless of what the top level domain was... wiki-
along offers a compelling possibility for an integrated help system. 

The idea of allowing for a split page like that is intriguing, although
it would generate a lot more traffic, and I would think more users would
want to customize it for their company. 

Permissions

I think we should shoot for a very open wiki permission system, at least
from the point of making it trivial for a new user to suggest/improve
content.

If we require more than a username/password to jump in and edit the
wiki, we'll lose a lot of valuable contributions from people who would
contribute but won't go through the hassle of waiting a day or two to
get permission first.

On the other side of the coin, however, is the wiki spam which will need
to be removed manually.

Does Confluence support processing new content in such a way that
approving changes would be easy?

Actually, a really cool feature would set the wiki to display the user's
latest changes to anyone requesting a page from the author's IP address,
but not to the rest of the world until a manager had approved the
change, perhaps by just returning the notification e-mail.

Thanks

Daniel



On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:34 -0700, Chris Howe wrote:
  

Daniel,

Are you referring to wikalong? Or actually adding a help menu for each
screen on the backend?

http://www.wikalong.org/

----- Original Message ----
From: Daniel Kunkel [hidden email]
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion [hidden email]
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2006 12:15:46 AM
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - Any interest in End-User and other
documentation?

Hi

A while back someone came up with what I thought was a great idea for
developing and integrating end user documentation right into OFBiz...

Link the online instructions on how to use any particular function or
page in OFBiz to help links that appear on that particular screen in
OFBiz. So, if you were trying to fumble through your first product
return, you could hit the help link and go to a documentation page
describing the return process, and important notes.

I think this could also be organized as a wiki type system, which
would
be especially great since I'm confident some end users would gladly
help
create high quality documentation.

I think from a user's standpoint this would work well too, as the end
users would immediately find the information they wanted most of the
time.


Thanks




On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:54 -0600, David E Jones wrote:
    

Ruth, (and others reading in...),

I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the
      

best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz
documentation, but something certainly is...
    

I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an
      

adequate tool for this.
    

It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such
      

things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to
instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher
level and link to details in other places.
    

Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the
      

documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see
that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers
some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so
far, is very much how-to oriented.
    

For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor
      

that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window
and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep
in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving
your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time
you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
    

Confluence also supports revision management and history
      

automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
    

-David


Ruth Hoffman wrote:
      

David, Si:
I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these
        

discussions.
    

IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool
        

- one 
    

that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in
        

DocBook 
    

format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence
        

looks to 
    

me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki
        

to 
    

Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the 
niceties of the tool.

In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and
        

displaying 
    

short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These
        

snippets are 
    

like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know
        

what 
    

island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the
        

big 
    

picture or even how the islands may be related to one
        

another.  What's 
    

really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how
        

to do 
    

things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how
        

to 
    

develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure,
        

flow 
    

and logic, not just random content strung together using search
        

tools, 
    

page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have
        

tables of 
    

contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated
        

with 
    

them as entire documents.

One final thought - have you tried to use a browser
        

based,  WYSIWYG 
    

editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not
        

so 
    

much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines
        

of text.
    

Again, just my 2 cents.

Ruth
Si Chen wrote:

        

David,

We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get
          

some 
    

clarification is the licensing term under which the content of 
docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people 
incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?

Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and 
exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different
          

people's 
    

documentation.

Si

David E. Jones wrote:
 

          

There was a bit of discussion following my message last week
            

about the proposed new end-user and other document site using
Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to
the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using
Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives
mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already
having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with
administering the software.
    

There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation
            

managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the
same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz
wiki.
    

What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in
            

this enough to help with it?
    

I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has
            

paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for
free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or
perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like
the approach?
    

There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a
            

different content management system because of different data
structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the
structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the
OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a
couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the
content to another tool. 
    

Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the
            

content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller
skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what
would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually
moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz
Confuence server.
    

So, a few questions:

1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from
            

other sources?
    

3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help
            

maintain this?
    

I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content
            

it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required
is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation
for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work
involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text
editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading
them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
    

-David


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-- 
Daniel

*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-
Have a GREAT Day!

Daniel Kunkel           [hidden email]
BioWaves, LLC           http://www.BioWaves.com
14150 NE 20th St. Suite F1
Bellevue, WA 98007
800-734-3588    425-895-0050
http://www.Apartment-Pets.com  http://www.Focus-Illusion.com
http://www.Brain-Fun.com       http://www.ColorGlasses.com
*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-


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[Ruth Hoffman]

Hi David:
Like I said, I'm willing to help no matter what the final verdict is.

Re: DocBook - I'm of the opinion that a publishing format is needed to
structure, at least a core set of documents. This would be independent
of the actual content repository or content collection/authoring tool.
The DocBook "process" would take XML formatted content (I guess these
are called "documents" in the XML world) - and apply DocBook stylesheets
to them, rendering a certain style and format of output - usually PDF.
At least, thats how I understand it works.

Maybe it's just because I learned to read using books and not computer
screens, but I still have a hard time following the flow of a story
(whether it be how OFBiz works or "War & Peace") one web page at a
time.  For short, "how to" recipes, Wikis are unbeatable. For anything
more than that, my experience has been that "User Guides",
"Administration Guides" and "Developer Guides" published in a book
format, are much more effective.

Further, IMHO, the flow and layout of a document are just as important
as the content.  Logical document flow and content continuity may not
seem important to developers (especially Java developers who usually
build small, self contained objects that, hopefully play well with the
outside world ;-), but these are really important to the following,
potential OFBiz constituents: administrators, operators, and project
managers.

BTW, I've been thinking of putting together an "unofficial" OFBiz
documentation site with some of the stuff I've written as notes for
myself - maybe I'll just go ahead and do that and see how the community
likes it. I really like what the Subversion people have done. Very
effective documentation, publishable as web pages (HTML) and as a book.
I don't know if they used DocBook, but it kind of looks like it.

Just my 2 cents.
Ruth

David E Jones wrote:

>Ruth, (and others reading in...),
>
>I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz documentation, but something certainly is...
>
>I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate tool for this.
>
>It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link to details in other places.
>
>Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so far, is very much how-to oriented.
>
>For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
>
>Confluence also supports revision management and history automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
>
>-David
>
>
>Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>  
>
>>David, Si:
>>I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
>>
>>IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool - one
>>that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in DocBook
>>format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence looks to
>>me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki to
>>Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the
>>niceties of the tool.
>>
>>In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
>>short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets are
>>like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know what
>>island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the big
>>picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.  What's
>>really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how to do
>>things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how to
>>develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure, flow
>>and logic, not just random content strung together using search tools,
>>page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have tables of
>>contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated with
>>them as entire documents.
>>
>>One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
>>editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
>>much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of text.
>>
>>Again, just my 2 cents.
>>
>>Ruth
>>Si Chen wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>David,
>>>
>>>We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
>>>clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
>>>docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
>>>incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
>>>
>>>Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
>>>exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
>>>documentation.
>>>
>>>Si
>>>
>>>David E. Jones wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>>>>
>>>>There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>>>>
>>>>What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>>>>
>>>>I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>>>>
>>>>There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool.
>>>>
>>>>Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>>>
>>>>So, a few questions:
>>>>
>>>>1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>>>>2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>>>>3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>>>>
>>>>I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>>>>
>>>>-David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>Dev mailing list
>>>>[hidden email]
>>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Dev mailing list
>>>[hidden email]
>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Dev mailing list
>>[hidden email]
>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>    
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Dev mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>  
>

 
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[David E. Jones]

-1

Then who would maintain them and how? The core committers or through patches? How would people comment on them and how would that feedback get into the main docs?

-David

Andrew Sykes wrote:

> Isn't that a good argument for creating help screens directly in OFBiz
> as Chris mentioned.
>
> On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 00:46 -0600, David E. Jones wrote:
>> Daniel,
>>
>> With the Confluence approach this would work out great. In the Undersun end-user documentation we have references for pretty much all page in OFBiz, so once that content is migrated over (the manual work I mentioned) we could add links to that content in the OFBiz screens. I think that's a great idea...
>>
>> Of course, with that much traffic we may have to put it on a bigger server and may need to push for donations to help with this...
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> Daniel Kunkel wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> A while back someone came up with what I thought was a great idea for
>>> developing and integrating end user documentation right into OFBiz...
>>>
>>> Link the online instructions on how to use any particular function or
>>> page in OFBiz to help links that appear on that particular screen in
>>> OFBiz. So, if you were trying to fumble through your first product
>>> return, you could hit the help link and go to a documentation page
>>> describing the return process, and important notes.
>>>
>>> I think this could also be organized as a wiki type system, which would
>>> be especially great since I'm confident some end users would gladly help
>>> create high quality documentation.
>>>
>>> I think from a user's standpoint this would work well too, as the end
>>> users would immediately find the information they wanted most of the
>>> time.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:54 -0600, David E Jones wrote:
>>>> Ruth, (and others reading in...),
>>>>
>>>> I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz documentation, but something certainly is...
>>>>
>>>> I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate tool for this.
>>>>
>>>> It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link to details in other places.
>>>>
>>>> Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so far, is very much how-to oriented.
>>>>
>>>> For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
>>>>
>>>> Confluence also supports revision management and history automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>>>>> David, Si:
>>>>> I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool - one
>>>>> that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in DocBook
>>>>> format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence looks to
>>>>> me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki to
>>>>> Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the
>>>>> niceties of the tool.
>>>>>
>>>>> In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
>>>>> short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets are
>>>>> like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know what
>>>>> island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the big
>>>>> picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.  What's
>>>>> really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how to do
>>>>> things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how to
>>>>> develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure, flow
>>>>> and logic, not just random content strung together using search tools,
>>>>> page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have tables of
>>>>> contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated with
>>>>> them as entire documents.
>>>>>
>>>>> One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
>>>>> editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
>>>>> much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of text.
>>>>>
>>>>> Again, just my 2 cents.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ruth
>>>>> Si Chen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> David,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
>>>>>> clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
>>>>>> docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
>>>>>> incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
>>>>>> exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
>>>>>> documentation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Si
>>>>>>
>>>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So, a few questions:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>>>>>>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>>>>>>> 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -David
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  
>>>>>>>    
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>
>>>>>  
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>  
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
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[David E. Jones]

David Welton wrote:
> IIRC, the ASF has some Confluence stuff set up, if you guys would
> like, I can investigate.
>

It looks like certain projects are using a server that Atlassian (the maker of Confluence) hosts on behalf of Apache and other open source projects.

That seems to be the closest thing to an "official" ASF Confluence server.

-David
 
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[David E. Jones]

If any one, or any group, had sufficient time/money resources to put together a big cohesive document or series of books about OFBiz that would be great.

However, as I see it now we'll be lucky to get a decent percentage of the functionality in OFBiz documented in _any_ format given that most people who can or want to help with this are in the same boat as you are with a desire to help here and there and put some notes in on different topics and such.

>From the end-user perspective the Undersun docs are the closest thing I'm aware of to a comprehensive effort, and of course the docs that Si Chen and his crew put together were I guess moving in that direction, but have more how to oriented stuff and such. These are both done by investment from the respective companies under a fair expense and given that it is not profitable in any way that direction will probably not continue, I know it won't for Undersun. We've given up on a centralized effort with someone working full time to maintain docs and soliciting feedback and information from various developers and others involved in OFBiz. It only worked so well, it was expensive, and there was no profit in it.

The ideal is a nice thing to think about, but if we can't work together as a community with a limited ability to centralize resources, I just don't see any other way it can/will happen.

Unless, of course, I'm totally wrong and someone has ear-marked a few hundred thousand dollars (or the equivalent in man-hours by some means) to pool the information and get it structured and formatted into a good set of documentation...

-David


Ruth Hoffman wrote:

> Hi David:
> Like I said, I'm willing to help no matter what the final verdict is.
>
> Re: DocBook - I'm of the opinion that a publishing format is needed to
> structure, at least a core set of documents. This would be independent
> of the actual content repository or content collection/authoring tool.
> The DocBook "process" would take XML formatted content (I guess these
> are called "documents" in the XML world) - and apply DocBook stylesheets
> to them, rendering a certain style and format of output - usually PDF.
> At least, thats how I understand it works.
>
> Maybe it's just because I learned to read using books and not computer
> screens, but I still have a hard time following the flow of a story
> (whether it be how OFBiz works or "War & Peace") one web page at a
> time.  For short, "how to" recipes, Wikis are unbeatable. For anything
> more than that, my experience has been that "User Guides",
> "Administration Guides" and "Developer Guides" published in a book
> format, are much more effective.
>
> Further, IMHO, the flow and layout of a document are just as important
> as the content.  Logical document flow and content continuity may not
> seem important to developers (especially Java developers who usually
> build small, self contained objects that, hopefully play well with the
> outside world ;-), but these are really important to the following,
> potential OFBiz constituents: administrators, operators, and project
> managers.
>
> BTW, I've been thinking of putting together an "unofficial" OFBiz
> documentation site with some of the stuff I've written as notes for
> myself - maybe I'll just go ahead and do that and see how the community
> likes it. I really like what the Subversion people have done. Very
> effective documentation, publishable as web pages (HTML) and as a book.
> I don't know if they used DocBook, but it kind of looks like it.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
> Ruth
>
> David E Jones wrote:
>
>> Ruth, (and others reading in...),
>>
>> I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz documentation, but something certainly is...
>>
>> I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate tool for this.
>>
>> It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link to details in other places.
>>
>> Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so far, is very much how-to oriented.
>>
>> For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
>>
>> Confluence also supports revision management and history automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> David, Si:
>>> I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
>>>
>>> IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool - one
>>> that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in DocBook
>>> format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence looks to
>>> me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki to
>>> Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the
>>> niceties of the tool.
>>>
>>> In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
>>> short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets are
>>> like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know what
>>> island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the big
>>> picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.  What's
>>> really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how to do
>>> things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how to
>>> develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure, flow
>>> and logic, not just random content strung together using search tools,
>>> page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have tables of
>>> contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated with
>>> them as entire documents.
>>>
>>> One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
>>> editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
>>> much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of text.
>>>
>>> Again, just my 2 cents.
>>>
>>> Ruth
>>> Si Chen wrote:
>>>
>>>    
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
>>>> clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
>>>> docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
>>>> incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
>>>>
>>>> Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
>>>> exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
>>>> documentation.
>>>>
>>>> Si
>>>>
>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>>>>>
>>>>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>>>>>
>>>>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool.
>>>>>
>>>>> Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, a few questions:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>>>>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>>>>> 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>>>>>
>>>>> -David
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>        
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> [hidden email]
>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>    
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>>  
>>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[Hans Bakker]

We could think about finding a way that everyboduy works on the Confluence
server and then have an export facility which would add this information in
the content component and use it as a online help within OFBiz...

This would be possible if every informationpiece in confluance is categorized
by component/function and perhaps screen?

Hans

On Friday 02 June 2006 07:33, David E Jones wrote:

> -1
>
> Then who would maintain them and how? The core committers or through
> patches? How would people comment on them and how would that feedback get
> into the main docs?
>
> -David
>
> Andrew Sykes wrote:
> > Isn't that a good argument for creating help screens directly in OFBiz
> > as Chris mentioned.
> >
> > On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 00:46 -0600, David E. Jones wrote:
> >> Daniel,
> >>
> >> With the Confluence approach this would work out great. In the Undersun
> >> end-user documentation we have references for pretty much all page in
> >> OFBiz, so once that content is migrated over (the manual work I
> >> mentioned) we could add links to that content in the OFBiz screens. I
> >> think that's a great idea...
> >>
> >> Of course, with that much traffic we may have to put it on a bigger
> >> server and may need to push for donations to help with this...
> >>
> >> -David
> >>
> >> Daniel Kunkel wrote:
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> A while back someone came up with what I thought was a great idea for
> >>> developing and integrating end user documentation right into OFBiz...
> >>>
> >>> Link the online instructions on how to use any particular function or
> >>> page in OFBiz to help links that appear on that particular screen in
> >>> OFBiz. So, if you were trying to fumble through your first product
> >>> return, you could hit the help link and go to a documentation page
> >>> describing the return process, and important notes.
> >>>
> >>> I think this could also be organized as a wiki type system, which would
> >>> be especially great since I'm confident some end users would gladly
> >>> help create high quality documentation.
> >>>
> >>> I think from a user's standpoint this would work well too, as the end
> >>> users would immediately find the information they wanted most of the
> >>> time.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Thanks
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:54 -0600, David E Jones wrote:
> >>>> Ruth, (and others reading in...),
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the
> >>>> best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz
> >>>> documentation, but something certainly is...
> >>>>
> >>>> I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate
> >>>> tool for this.
> >>>>
> >>>> It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things
> >>>> with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of
> >>>> copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link
> >>>> to details in other places.
> >>>>
> >>>> Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the
> >>>> documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see
> >>>> that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers
> >>>> some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so
> >>>> far, is very much how-to oriented.
> >>>>
> >>>> For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that
> >>>> has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and
> >>>> that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in
> >>>> mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your
> >>>> work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you
> >>>> are remotely editing something this is an issue.
> >>>>
> >>>> Confluence also supports revision management and history
> >>>> automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
> >>>>
> >>>> -David
> >>>>
> >>>> Ruth Hoffman wrote:
> >>>>> David, Si:
> >>>>> I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool -
> >>>>> one that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in
> >>>>> DocBook format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis.
> >>>>> Confluence looks to me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not
> >>>>> move the OFBiz Wiki to Confluence. That may spur more
> >>>>> participation...just based on the niceties of the tool.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
> >>>>> short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets
> >>>>> are like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know
> >>>>> what island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the
> >>>>> big picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.
> >>>>> What's really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning
> >>>>> how to do things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use
> >>>>> OFBiz; how to develop new components - etc. These are documents with
> >>>>> structure, flow and logic, not just random content strung together
> >>>>> using search tools, page links or even web page hierarchies. These
> >>>>> documents have tables of contents and indexes. They also have version
> >>>>> controls associated with them as entire documents.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
> >>>>> editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
> >>>>> much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of
> >>>>> text.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Again, just my 2 cents.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Ruth
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Si Chen wrote:
> >>>>>> David,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
> >>>>>> clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
> >>>>>> docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
> >>>>>> incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
> >>>>>> exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
> >>>>>> documentation.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Si
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
> >>>>>>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about
> >>>>>>> the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence
> >>>>>>> to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool
> >>>>>>> to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence,
> >>>>>>> even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is
> >>>>>>> available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting
> >>>>>>> arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the
> >>>>>>> software.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation
> >>>>>>> managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in
> >>>>>>> the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing
> >>>>>>> OFBiz wiki.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this
> >>>>>>> enough to help with it?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid
> >>>>>>> about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for
> >>>>>>> free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or
> >>>>>>> perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't
> >>>>>>> like the approach?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a
> >>>>>>> different content management system because of different data
> >>>>>>> structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the
> >>>>>>> structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend
> >>>>>>> the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers
> >>>>>>> did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move
> >>>>>>> the content to another tool.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the
> >>>>>>> content to another tool will require both less time and a far
> >>>>>>> smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some
> >>>>>>> analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of
> >>>>>>> hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc
> >>>>>>> site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> So, a few questions:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
> >>>>>>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from
> >>>>>>> other sources? 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per
> >>>>>>> week to help maintain this?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it
> >>>>>>> someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required
> >>>>>>> is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good
> >>>>>>> documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based
> >>>>>>> system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into
> >>>>>>> the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off
> >>>>>>> images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in
> >>>>>>> the text.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> -David
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>>>>> [hidden email]
> >>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>>>> [hidden email]
> >>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>>> [hidden email]
> >>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Dev mailing list
> >>>> [hidden email]
> >>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Dev mailing list
> >> [hidden email]
> >> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

--
Regards,
Hans Bakker
ANT Websystems Co.,Ltd (http://www.antwebsystems.com)

If you want to verify that this message really originates from
from the above person, download the public key from:
http://www.antwebsystems.com/hbakkerAntwebsystems.asc

 
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[Tim Ruppert]

I would have to say that without someone (or some group) being in charge
of pooling the information - that as a group it will be quite difficult
to come up with something that is cohesive and working towards
comprehensive.

I do realize this is obvious and that the committers have been doing
this up to this point (and thank you so much for all of that work), but
can we get together someone or some group of people that are focusing on
documentation?  Can the people with more of the knowledge spare a little
time to help this team (or coordinator) out?  How has that worked in the
past?

It's one thing not to have it in the same voice, but continuing with too
many structures will keep the documentation slightly disjointed.  Just a
thought - let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Tim

--
Tim Ruppert
HotWax Media
http://www.hotwaxmedia.com

o:801.649.6594
f:801.649.6595



Hans Bakker wrote:

> We could think about finding a way that everyboduy works on the Confluence
> server and then have an export facility which would add this information in
> the content component and use it as a online help within OFBiz...
>
> This would be possible if every informationpiece in confluance is categorized
> by component/function and perhaps screen?
>
> Hans
>
> On Friday 02 June 2006 07:33, David E Jones wrote:
>  
>> -1
>>
>> Then who would maintain them and how? The core committers or through
>> patches? How would people comment on them and how would that feedback get
>> into the main docs?
>>
>> -David
>>
>> Andrew Sykes wrote:
>>    
>>> Isn't that a good argument for creating help screens directly in OFBiz
>>> as Chris mentioned.
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 00:46 -0600, David E. Jones wrote:
>>>      
>>>> Daniel,
>>>>
>>>> With the Confluence approach this would work out great. In the Undersun
>>>> end-user documentation we have references for pretty much all page in
>>>> OFBiz, so once that content is migrated over (the manual work I
>>>> mentioned) we could add links to that content in the OFBiz screens. I
>>>> think that's a great idea...
>>>>
>>>> Of course, with that much traffic we may have to put it on a bigger
>>>> server and may need to push for donations to help with this...
>>>>
>>>> -David
>>>>
>>>> Daniel Kunkel wrote:
>>>>        
>>>>> Hi
>>>>>
>>>>> A while back someone came up with what I thought was a great idea for
>>>>> developing and integrating end user documentation right into OFBiz...
>>>>>
>>>>> Link the online instructions on how to use any particular function or
>>>>> page in OFBiz to help links that appear on that particular screen in
>>>>> OFBiz. So, if you were trying to fumble through your first product
>>>>> return, you could hit the help link and go to a documentation page
>>>>> describing the return process, and important notes.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think this could also be organized as a wiki type system, which would
>>>>> be especially great since I'm confident some end users would gladly
>>>>> help create high quality documentation.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think from a user's standpoint this would work well too, as the end
>>>>> users would immediately find the information they wanted most of the
>>>>> time.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 22:54 -0600, David E Jones wrote:
>>>>>          
>>>>>> Ruth, (and others reading in...),
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the
>>>>>> best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz
>>>>>> documentation, but something certainly is...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate
>>>>>> tool for this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things
>>>>>> with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of
>>>>>> copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link
>>>>>> to details in other places.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the
>>>>>> documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see
>>>>>> that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers
>>>>>> some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so
>>>>>> far, is very much how-to oriented.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that
>>>>>> has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and
>>>>>> that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in
>>>>>> mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your
>>>>>> work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you
>>>>>> are remotely editing something this is an issue.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Confluence also supports revision management and history
>>>>>> automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -David
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>> David, Si:
>>>>>>> I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool -
>>>>>>> one that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in
>>>>>>> DocBook format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis.
>>>>>>> Confluence looks to me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not
>>>>>>> move the OFBiz Wiki to Confluence. That may spur more
>>>>>>> participation...just based on the niceties of the tool.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
>>>>>>> short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets
>>>>>>> are like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know
>>>>>>> what island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the
>>>>>>> big picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.
>>>>>>> What's really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning
>>>>>>> how to do things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use
>>>>>>> OFBiz; how to develop new components - etc. These are documents with
>>>>>>> structure, flow and logic, not just random content strung together
>>>>>>> using search tools, page links or even web page hierarchies. These
>>>>>>> documents have tables of contents and indexes. They also have version
>>>>>>> controls associated with them as entire documents.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
>>>>>>> editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
>>>>>>> much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of
>>>>>>> text.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Again, just my 2 cents.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ruth
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Si Chen wrote:
>>>>>>>              
>>>>>>>> David,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
>>>>>>>> clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
>>>>>>>> docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
>>>>>>>> incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
>>>>>>>> exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
>>>>>>>> documentation.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Si
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>>>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about
>>>>>>>>> the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence
>>>>>>>>> to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool
>>>>>>>>> to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence,
>>>>>>>>> even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is
>>>>>>>>> available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting
>>>>>>>>> arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the
>>>>>>>>> software.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation
>>>>>>>>> managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in
>>>>>>>>> the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing
>>>>>>>>> OFBiz wiki.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this
>>>>>>>>> enough to help with it?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid
>>>>>>>>> about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for
>>>>>>>>> free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or
>>>>>>>>> perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't
>>>>>>>>> like the approach?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a
>>>>>>>>> different content management system because of different data
>>>>>>>>> structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the
>>>>>>>>> structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend
>>>>>>>>> the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers
>>>>>>>>> did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move
>>>>>>>>> the content to another tool.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the
>>>>>>>>> content to another tool will require both less time and a far
>>>>>>>>> smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some
>>>>>>>>> analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of
>>>>>>>>> hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc
>>>>>>>>> site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> So, a few questions:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>>>>>>>>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from
>>>>>>>>> other sources? 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per
>>>>>>>>> week to help maintain this?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it
>>>>>>>>> someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required
>>>>>>>>> is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good
>>>>>>>>> documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based
>>>>>>>>> system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into
>>>>>>>>> the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off
>>>>>>>>> images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in
>>>>>>>>> the text.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> -David
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>>>>                  
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>>              
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>>>> [hidden email]
>>>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>            
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Dev mailing list
>>>> [hidden email]
>>>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>        
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>    
>
>  
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[Ruth Hoffman]

Hi David:
Sorry, I guess I've hit a raw nerve. Can we at least agree to start with
a re-working of the Production Setup Guide? IMHO that would make a nice
framework, I mean outline, from which to expand on various topics (using
Undersun content and other, user contributed material.)

On a related topic, and I think Si already asked this, but I'm a little
slow sometimes... are there any copyright or licensing restrictions that
would keep me, as a private citizen or corporate entity,  from taking
the Production Guide, modifying it as I see fit and publishing it using
a medium of my choice? Does the content of this document fall under the
same licensing as the rest of OFBiz?

TIA
Ruth

David E Jones wrote:

>If any one, or any group, had sufficient time/money resources to put together a big cohesive document or series of books about OFBiz that would be great.
>
>However, as I see it now we'll be lucky to get a decent percentage of the functionality in OFBiz documented in _any_ format given that most people who can or want to help with this are in the same boat as you are with a desire to help here and there and put some notes in on different topics and such.
>
>>From the end-user perspective the Undersun docs are the closest thing I'm aware of to a comprehensive effort, and of course the docs that Si Chen and his crew put together were I guess moving in that direction, but have more how to oriented stuff and such. These are both done by investment from the respective companies under a fair expense and given that it is not profitable in any way that direction will probably not continue, I know it won't for Undersun. We've given up on a centralized effort with someone working full time to maintain docs and soliciting feedback and information from various developers and others involved in OFBiz. It only worked so well, it was expensive, and there was no profit in it.
>
>The ideal is a nice thing to think about, but if we can't work together as a community with a limited ability to centralize resources, I just don't see any other way it can/will happen.
>
>Unless, of course, I'm totally wrong and someone has ear-marked a few hundred thousand dollars (or the equivalent in man-hours by some means) to pool the information and get it structured and formatted into a good set of documentation...
>
>-David
>
>
>Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi David:
>>Like I said, I'm willing to help no matter what the final verdict is.
>>
>>Re: DocBook - I'm of the opinion that a publishing format is needed to
>>structure, at least a core set of documents. This would be independent
>>of the actual content repository or content collection/authoring tool.
>>The DocBook "process" would take XML formatted content (I guess these
>>are called "documents" in the XML world) - and apply DocBook stylesheets
>>to them, rendering a certain style and format of output - usually PDF.
>>At least, thats how I understand it works.
>>
>>Maybe it's just because I learned to read using books and not computer
>>screens, but I still have a hard time following the flow of a story
>>(whether it be how OFBiz works or "War & Peace") one web page at a
>>time.  For short, "how to" recipes, Wikis are unbeatable. For anything
>>more than that, my experience has been that "User Guides",
>>"Administration Guides" and "Developer Guides" published in a book
>>format, are much more effective.
>>
>>Further, IMHO, the flow and layout of a document are just as important
>>as the content.  Logical document flow and content continuity may not
>>seem important to developers (especially Java developers who usually
>>build small, self contained objects that, hopefully play well with the
>>outside world ;-), but these are really important to the following,
>>potential OFBiz constituents: administrators, operators, and project
>>managers.
>>
>>BTW, I've been thinking of putting together an "unofficial" OFBiz
>>documentation site with some of the stuff I've written as notes for
>>myself - maybe I'll just go ahead and do that and see how the community
>>likes it. I really like what the Subversion people have done. Very
>>effective documentation, publishable as web pages (HTML) and as a book.
>>I don't know if they used DocBook, but it kind of looks like it.
>>
>>Just my 2 cents.
>>Ruth
>>
>>David E Jones wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Ruth, (and others reading in...),
>>>
>>>I agree that a good tool is needed. I'm not sure of DocBook is the best for the sort of collaborative effort that we need for OFBiz documentation, but something certainly is...
>>>
>>>I hope, and for now also believe, that Confluence will be an adequate tool for this.
>>>
>>>It is possible to do a table of contents, index, and other such things with it. The nice thing is that content can be linked to instead of copied over, and summary documents can stay at a higher level and link to details in other places.
>>>
>>>Things such as how-to guides and such are dependent on the documentation itself more than the tool that is used, so I don't see that being a problem. The main document I have copied over that covers some of the high level processes, namely the order creation process so far, is very much how-to oriented.
>>>
>>>For the editing issue, Confluence has some a nice WYSIWIG editor that has a "full screen" mode that can be as big as you browser window and that runs in a separate window. The only difficult thing to keep in mind is that you don't want too much time to pass before saving your work. Confluence has some auto-save type of stuff, but any time you are remotely editing something this is an issue.
>>>
>>>Confluence also supports revision management and history automatically, so this takes care of things pretty nicely.
>>>
>>>-David
>>>
>>>
>>>Ruth Hoffman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>David, Si:
>>>>I'm willing to help, regardless of the outcome of these discussions.
>>>>
>>>>IMHO, I think you should be looking at a document management tool - one
>>>>that can manage and publish entire documents (for example, in DocBook
>>>>format) vs. content management tools such as Wikis. Confluence looks to
>>>>me to be a really nice Wiki. In fact, why not move the OFBiz Wiki to
>>>>Confluence. That may spur more participation...just based on the
>>>>niceties of the tool.
>>>>
>>>>In my experience Wikis are really good at collecting and displaying
>>>>short snippets (usually 1 or 2 web pages) of content. These snippets are
>>>>like islands of information that just exist. Great if you know what
>>>>island you are looking for, not so good if you want to see the big
>>>>picture or even how the islands may be related to one another.  What's
>>>>really missing from the OFBiz project are documents concerning how to do
>>>>things: how to administer and operate OFBiz; how to use OFBiz; how to
>>>>develop new components - etc. These are documents with structure, flow
>>>>and logic, not just random content strung together using search tools,
>>>>page links or even web page hierarchies. These documents have tables of
>>>>contents and indexes. They also have version controls associated with
>>>>them as entire documents.
>>>>
>>>>One final thought - have you tried to use a browser based,  WYSIWYG
>>>>editor to write anything more than a few web pages in length?  Not so
>>>>much fun to work with when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of text.
>>>>
>>>>Again, just my 2 cents.
>>>>
>>>>Ruth
>>>>Si Chen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>David,
>>>>>
>>>>>We'd definitely help.  The only major issue we'd like to get some
>>>>>clarification is the licensing term under which the content of
>>>>>docs.ofbiz.org would be available.  In other words, can people
>>>>>incorporate them into other works of documentation about OFBIZ?
>>>>>
>>>>>Secondarily, do you know if Confluence supports RSS imports and
>>>>>exports?  That might be a good way to consolidate different people's
>>>>>documentation.
>>>>>
>>>>>Si
>>>>>
>>>>>David E. Jones wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So, a few questions:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>>>>>>2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>>>>>>3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>-David
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>>Dev mailing list
>>>>>>[hidden email]
>>>>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>
>>>>>>      
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>Dev mailing list
>>>>>[hidden email]
>>>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>Dev mailing list
>>>>[hidden email]
>>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Dev mailing list
>>>[hidden email]
>>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Dev mailing list
>>[hidden email]
>>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>    
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Dev mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>  
>

 
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[hidden email]
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[BJ Freeman]

There has been discussion about people wanting to change the core Ofbiz
and it not been in the general interest of ofbiz.

I am one of those. So I had to come up with a way to do what I wanted,
the way I wanted without impacting ofbiz as such.

My suggestion, and the course I took was to create a separate folder and
application, with in ofbiz. I thought of using specialized folder, but
those are ones that get committed, and I wanted to be totally Isolated.

I was able to leverage a lot of the screens in ofbiz application, by
adding views in the controller from the applications controller.

I developed my own widgets Shells, Like Main decorator and menus, that
called the appropriated application screen and/or ftl's  For the
specialized functions I have, I used my own screen menu, and tree widgets.
The widgets are a god-send to the endeavor, especially once you get the
hang of COMPONENT://

The beauty of this is ofbiz can evolve and I just change the links. but
my application will continue with out being modified by the SVN updates.
If a section get deleted from the SVN, I can just move it into my app
space and keep rolling.

Hope this help those that want to change ofbiz and are frustrated about
what is allowed. BTW I agree about not changing the core ofbiz for one
persons fancy.


 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

Is there a project or even an existing ML for Jira ASF ?

Jacques
 
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[Jacopo Cappellato]

Hi Jacques,

the Jira project is here:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ

Mail notifications are sent to the OFBiz dev list at Apache:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ofbiz-dev/

Jacopo


Jacques Le Roux wrote:
> Is there a project or even an existing ML for Jira ASF ?
>
> Jacques
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[Christian Geisert]

David E Jones schrieb:
>
> David Welton wrote:
>
>>IIRC, the ASF has some Confluence stuff set up, if you guys would
>>like, I can investigate.
>
> It looks like certain projects are using a server that Atlassian (the maker of Confluence) hosts on behalf of Apache and other open source projects.
>
> That seems to be the closest thing to an "official" ASF Confluence server.

No, there is http://cwiki.apache.org which should be official soon IIUC.
I think it would be a good if the OFBiz doc (whatever) tools would run
on offical ASF maschines.

--
Christian
 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

> Hi Jacques,
>
> the Jira project is here:
>
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ
>
> Mail notifications are sent to the OFBiz dev list at Apache:
>
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ofbiz-dev/
>
> Jacopo

Thanks Jacopo,

I went to this page but did not see the link to subscribe (and also was
discouraged by the  "(still not used)" on
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/ofbiz.html)

Is it possible to subscribe to  [hidden email] ?

Jacques

>
> Jacques Le Roux wrote:
> > Is there a project or even an existing ML for Jira ASF ?
> >
> > Jacques
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dev mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[Scott Gray]

Hi Jacopo

Just thought I'd mention that the Incubation Status page is still showing
the jira as "still not used", and also there are no jira notifications on
the apache dev list?

Regards
Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Jacopo Cappellato
Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 5:19 p.m.
To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - ASF Jira ML ?

Hi Jacques,

the Jira project is here:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ

Mail notifications are sent to the OFBiz dev list at Apache:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ofbiz-dev/

Jacopo


Jacques Le Roux wrote:
> Is there a project or even an existing ML for Jira ASF ?
>
> Jacques
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

[davidnwelton]

I think the typical open source path is to create a project that
becomes popular, including some reference docs, and once it takes off,
books start to pop up.  They aren't free, but the price is usually
reasonable, and I think people are more comfortable paying for a nice
book that they can drag around with them, and they know has been
vetted and gone over by an editor.  It's that bootstrap stage that's
difficult.

I think whatever solution gets docs up, running and relatively
centralized in the shortest amount of time without being too much of a
long-term lockin is good.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[Jacopo Cappellato]

Hi Scott,

I'm going to update the Incubator's status page during the weekend,
thanks for pointing this out (I was waiting a bit before declaring the
new Jira server 'official' to see if there are issues with it).
Jira notifications are sent to the apache dev list... aren't they?

Jacopo



Scott Gray wrote:

> Hi Jacopo
>
> Just thought I'd mention that the Incubation Status page is still showing
> the jira as "still not used", and also there are no jira notifications on
> the apache dev list?
>
> Regards
> Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Jacopo Cappellato
> Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 5:19 p.m.
> To: OFBiz Project Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Dev - ASF Jira ML ?
>
> Hi Jacques,
>
> the Jira project is here:
>
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ
>
> Mail notifications are sent to the OFBiz dev list at Apache:
>
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ofbiz-dev/
>
> Jacopo
>
>
> Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>> Is there a project or even an existing ML for Jira ASF ?
>>
>> Jacques
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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