[mapserver-dev] Release plans migrated to Trac

[Howard Butler]

On Dec 3, 2008, at 1:58 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

> Howard Butler wrote:
>> To continue the ongoing migration updates, I have migrated the  
>> release plan documents to Trac.
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/ReleasePlans
>> All of the other documents of the "development" section of the  
>> website are in svn, but it made a lot of sense to have release  
>> planning documents be part of Trac for the ticket and svn  
>> integration.
>
> Howard,
>
> Thanks! you are doing a great job. I am very please by the direction  
> that this is taking. I think it is excellent that all these docs are  
> getting migrated to svn so that we now will have a history of  
> changes over time. I also think that exporting the docs to the  
> website will provide us the most long term stability with docs in  
> svn and presentation on the website and a thin translation in between.
>

Thanks.  Being as I'm mostly responsible for the current state of  
affairs, it's nice to know that things are progressing in a direction  
that will provide some long term stability (and maybe even coerce a  
few folks into writing some docs!).  I would note that the current  
versions of Plone would allow us to track historical changes in  
documents as well, but not in a way we are used to.

The biggest hurdle in this effort has been the conversion of documents  
to ReStructured text.  There were a number of docs that were various  
bits of html.  With most things in svn, people won't be able to mix in  
html anymore, so in that sense we're moving back to how we did things  
before (docbook + a process).  ReStructured text is vastly superior as  
an editing and working format than docbook, however, and I hope this  
will provide the boost that will allow interested individuals to take  
on our documentation effort.

One area that I'm unsure what to do about is the FAQ.  In some ways, I  
see the FAQ belonging in the main documentation and part of the 600+  
page book of docs that we've already accumulated.  The benefits in  
linkage and referencing would be strong, and it would close the circle  
on the docs being available in both a website and a one-stop shop  
(pdf).  On the other hand, I really like OpenLayer's FAQ, and I wonder  
if investing some effort to spool a community-maintained FAQ into  
ReStructured text that would ultimately make it into the mainline docs  
would be worth the effort.  Do people have strong feelings either way  
here?

Another item is there are a number of docs that have yet to be  
incorporated, because they don't fit very well, or they're an outdated  
here's-how-I-compiled-MapServer book report, or because they are not  
ReStructured text and have limited applicability.  http://svn.osgeo.org/mapserver/trunk/docs/howto/ 
  lists the docs I'm not quite sure what to do with.  If you have some  
idea where some of these might go, or which compilation docs are  
useful and still relevant, please let me know.

Howard