[mapserver-users] Documentation for current versions?

[Jamie Smedsmo]

I'm organizing the documentation efforts at the UMN, so I thought I'd
throw in a few comments in the documentation discussion that has been
going on.

We are getting closer to a complete set of baseline documentation for
the basic MapServer software as well as some of the MapScript
extensions (thanks Jean-Francois, Steve, Jeff, Ken, and Frank).  I
think we all agree that documentation is a prerequisite for the
official release of MapServer 3.5.

Having said that, there is certainly a need for a lot more
documentation and examples.  One suggestion, is that more people make
their source code available so that it can be linked on the gallery
page.  We have started dividing the gallery up based on the tools
used to create the application (let me know if you see any mistakes),
and I think a great addition would be links to the code behind the
application.  More short HOWTOs that describe how to add a simple
feature in MapServer (e.g. a JavaScript gui-style interface) would be 
great.

As for including a history of changes to parameters/objects in one
set of documentation, I think that may be a bit confusing and
difficult to maintain.  We are planning to keep older versions of
docs available.  We should also consider including a summary of the 
changes from the previous MapServer version in each of the reference
documents.

Right now, we are using the MapServer bugzilla as a way of tracking
errors in documentation.  I think will stick with that for now.
Perhaps I need to make that more visible on the documentation page.

I think that covers it all.  Let me know if you'd like to do some
writing.  I can help with the XML side of things.

Jamie Smedsmo
MapServer Documentation Coordinator
Department of Forest Resources
University of Minnesota