Re: [drupal-devel] documentation and the book module (was reflections on the Drupal 4.3.0 battle)

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Charlie Lowe wrote:
> > Frankly, I haven't put much effort in the book module because I
> > believe we should maintain the Drupal documentation using LaTeX or
> > Docbook but that is another story.

> Just thinking that Drupal should eat it's own dog food here. If the book
> module is (or to be) an effective collaborative authoring tool, then
> wouldn't it make more sense to expand it's capabilities?  Make it more
> suitable for producing the documentation and make it easier to integrate
> into the help system.

Making the book module suitable involves versioning and workflow that
supports branches: we should be able to retrieve an old version of a book
(not just a page) as well as maintain specific versions.

I have been approached by a publisher that wishes to publish the Drupal
handbook.  The current handbook is not suitable because (i) the format is
not suitable for print, (ii) the book lacks consistency (writing style,
mark-up) and is not (iii) well-balanced.  Also, we have no means to
generate an index and to do other book-like things.

I believe none of the above is going to happen unless we move the
documentation to CVS and maintain it like we do with the code.  I'm
confident that the result will be a better manual.

-- 
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
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