[tomboy-list] Tomboy Documentation / Screenshots

[Boyd Timothy]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:40 AM, Paul Cutler <pcutler at foresightlinux.org> wrote:
> Good morning -
>
>  I saw on Boyd's blog a call for help regarding documenting the new
>  Notebooks feature and screenshots, and thought I'd offer to help.  I'm
>  the Community Manager for Foresight, and while I don't have a lot of
>  development experience, I have a little experience writing
>  documentation in Docbook.  (I'll probably need some help in creating
>  the patch to submit once complete).
>
>  Briefly looking through the Tomboy.xml file on GNOME svn, I shouldn't
>  have any problem updating it, though I'll do a more thorough review
>  when I get home from work later today.
>
>  I'm running the development version of Foresight with GNOME 2.21.92,
>  so I'll be able to test the new features and take screenshots.
>
>  Are there any specific features or screenshots that you're looking
>  for?  I assume creating new Notebooks, notes in Notebooks, etc.  Even
>  just a rough list of bullets of stuff you want documented would help.
>
>  I'll join Tomboy IRC tonight when I get home or just drop me an email
>  with any pointers.
>
>  Thanks!
>
>  Paul

Paul, (Matt and Nic, bcc'd), and anyone else who'd like to help out
with documenting Tomboy,

Thanks for your guys' interest/willingness to help out with the
documentation effort.  If you haven't already subscribed to the Tomboy
mailing list (http://lists.beatniksoftware.com/listinfo.cgi/tomboy-list-beatniksoftware.com),
I'd suggest subscribing so you can collaborate on what each of you can
do to help document/screenshot the latest Tomboy.

The basic idea is that you have to edit (by hand) the
help/C/tomboy.xml file.  The most important thing to add is some
documentation about the new "Notebooks" feature.  It should probably
be added as a new <sect1> section right before the "Synchronization"
section.  New screenshots should be created for: creating a notebook,
deleting a notebook, moving a single note into a notebook by dragging
and dropping in the search window, moving a note to a notebook by
selecting the notebook icon in the Note Window Toolbar, Highlighting
the "All Notes" and the "Unfiled Notes" items, creating new notes in a
specific notebook (from either the search window's menu or the tomboy
icon menu), etc.

All existing screenshots referenced in the XML file should be updated
(at least evaluated and updated as needed).

The format of the XML document should be pretty self-explanatory.
Just follow the format that's already there.  Seems like I remember
there being some documentation style guides for GNOME on
live.gnome.org.  It'd be a good idea to track those down for
grammar/usage recommendations.

Since this is an open source project, I obviously can't force any of
you to take care of the documentation (wouldn't that be nice).  :)
So, if none of you are able to get something mostly done by Friday,
please let me know as soon as possible so we can make other
arrangements.

Feel free to submit a zip file/tarball/entire tomboy.xml
file/patch/etc.  If you're not familiar with SVN/patch stuff, that
shouldn't be a concern as we have many around here who can take care
of that for you.

So, just to summarize (this is the requested bulleted list of things to do):

- Write a new "Notebooks" section to describe how to use Notebooks
- Make screenshots of the Notebook features
- Update existing screenshots in the documentation
- Review the entire documentation (looking for places to clarify/improve)

That's it!  Divide and conquer!  And seriously, thanks for the help!

Cheers,

Boyd