Re: Doc Writer for GNU Hurd for The GNU Hurd

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hi!

On Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:57:37 +0200, "Abhishek Sharma" <abi@dibe.unige.it> wrote:
> I am intrested in Documentation for GNU Hurd . How can help ?

First, thanks for your interest!

Our specific project aside, Free Software / Open Source software
generally mostly works according to the principle that you work on what
you'd like to work on (because you need it for yourself, for example) --
self-initiative is the key word.  (Or you are being paid for working on a
task, of course.)  The same applies to documentation tasks: just pick one
and submit your work for review.  Some software projects have lists of
tasks, but of course it is also fine to ask the maintainers for their
preference (as you have done).


Now back to the GNU/Hurd:

In our case, you will quickly notice that as prerequisite for doing
useful documentation work, you have to be familiar with the system; this
is deeply technical stuff.  Are you familiar with the GNU/Hurd (at least
somewhat), as well as operating system principles in general?


We maintain a (totally incompletely) list of documentation tasks at
<http://www.bddebian.com:8888/~hurd-web/tag/open_issue_documentation/>.
This list is built from the files that are tagged with
open_issue_documentation in their Markdown source code.  A lot of these
are just: »turn IRC discussion into continuous text«, which is likely
difficult if you don't know the context.  Anyway, if you'd like to work
on any of these (or improve any other web page), I suggest you check out
the web pages' Git repository as documented on
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/contributing/web_pages.html>, and use
grep (or similar) to look for open_issue_documentation tags in the *.mdwn
files.  (Editing via the web interface would work, too, but is a bit
clumsy.)

If you're out for some more advanced work, for example document a
library, you would first familiarize yourself with the library, and then
write it all down; this could result in a text like the following:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/libnetfs.html>.  Such texts would
be welcome for libtrivfs, libdiskfs, and further libraries, too.  All
these are covered a bit in various places, which should be unified and
extended: <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/reference_manual.html>,
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/hurd_hacking_guide.html>, further
web pages, IRC discussions (as mentioned above), mailing list posts, etc.


If there are any questions, don't hesitate to ask.


Grüße,
 Thomas

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