AFAIK the docs group is taking a fresh look at the documentation needed for XOOPS. I'm sure they will use the current wiki's contents where appropriate, but they will use a completely different means of publishing these documents.
This is really horacio's area of influence, so if I misspeak horacio, feel free to throw a frozen trout at my head.

May I suggest that when creating the documention, it can be imported into PDF format? This way, you are guaranteed a machine readable text that will print and display anywhere.

Making manuals in PDF format not only makes sense, it's professional looking.

Just my thoughts.

Quote:
I completely agree. For the printable/downloadable version, PDF is probably the best way to make this available. It is very portable, and it also seems to be much more compact than say other formats. But since you can convert to PDF from *many* formats, what is done "behind the scenes" probably doesn't matter too much. Things like 'latex' or 'docbook' are probably useful as you can partition a big document into a lot of files which makes it easier to allow multiple contributors via e.g. CVS.

Fellow Xoopsers:

There's a lot happening in the documentation front. It's just too early to show progress. Yet I can give you some advance of what's cooking.

1) As ackbarr mentioned, we are basing our activities in en evolved version of the XOOPS Documentation Roadmap I posted here a while ago. This has provided us with a list of desirable documentation for users of all levels.

2) We're still discussing the actual holding format of the documentation, but certainly we agree we need different presentation formats. In the Roadmap I suggested to have as a minimum a Web format (HTML), a printable version (Word/PDF) and an offline-browsable version (CHM). We're seeing approaches that use XML to write once and have many output formats, but still have no clear road about this, as every medium has its own logic.

3) At the moment, the documentation team has 12 members. We've split into 4 subteams and already have an assignment for each one. Specifically, we're working on (I include the code and title of each document, as well as its description):

XU-002: XOOPS Installation Guide
[size=x-small]This guide should be thought of as THE fundamental XOOPS guide. Must be written thinking than every year, thousands of users will use this guide to create their first XOOPS site. So it should be comprehensive, clear, profusely illustrated.[/size]

XU-003: XOOPS Operations Guide
[size=x-small]This guide should be thought of as the Webmaster's day-to-day reference. Must include detailed instructions about the System module and all its functionalities, as well as about modules and blocks, the commenting system, the managers: templates, users, images, and all necessary to operate a site.[/size]

XN-002: A XOOPS Webmaster Basic Manual
[size=x-small]This guide is for newbies, so more than a detailed explanation perhaps it should have clear categories, lots of highlights, tips on how to do common chores, etc.[/size]

XN-001: A visual introduction to Xoops
[size=x-small]This guide should be thought of as our sales brochure. Should graphically highlight Xoops' strengths and flexibility and offer a stunning panorama of what it means to be part of this community. With this I mean it should cover not only the software but also the XOOPS sites and the community as "sales" tools.[/size]

So we ARE working. Please be patient. We've had little time and as you know, documenting a complex system such as XOOPS is not an easy task to do. Wait a bit and we'll give you good documents.

Cheers.