[OpenLayers-Dev] new doc for OpenLayers

[Christopher Schmidt]

Having reviewed the doc in question, I find that it tends to wander a
bit. Here's some thoughts I have on the first pass.

 1. The doc starts out with general info on OpenLayers. I think that
    belongs elsewhere, with the exception of a one-paragraph blurb.
    Specifically, I've been using the blurb at the top of
    http://docs.openlayers.org/library/spherical_mercator 
    
    The rest of the information should be available from the root of the
    site, which should be easily navigable once it is integrated into
    the documentation. This would apply, for example, to the examples
    links, api doc links, etc.
 
 2. Documents should follow a somewhat natural progression, with a single
    topic, in my opinion. (So, for example, "TileCache" would belong in
    a doc on optimization or caching, rather than in an 'intro' doc.)

 3. That progression should be outlined in prose/text form, rather than
    bullet points, in my opinion.

    "This document describes the Spherical Mercator projection, what it
    is, and when you should use it. It includes some background
    information, demonstration of using the code with just a commercial
    layer, and how to add a WMS over the top of that layer, and how to
    reproject coordinates within OpenLayers so that you can reproject
    coordinates inside of OpenLayers. It is expected that readers of
    this tutorial will have a basic understanding of reprojection and a
    basic understanding of OpenLayers.", for example, or in your case,
    possibly:

    This document will give you information on how to create a map and
    layer object, demonstrate creating your first map, and demonstrate
    creation of a commercial base layer, and how to add a vector file
    (like GML) over the top of it.

If you take out the spherical mercator stuff like reprojection and
server side configuration, it can probably be trimmed down to something
closer to:

  http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Documentation/Dev/introduction

though I think that needs to have a commercial layer addition added to
it. I see this as a replacement for:

  http://openlayers.org/doc/

Which I think we should get rid of as soon as possible. :)  

I think we can work in the wiki while developing documentation, and then
we can check that into the /doc/ tree as soon as we're happy with it.

> I would like to know if you (and the community) are interesting to get more 
> document from me, and if others people are working on such document and which 
> topic (in order to avoid other duplicate works).

I'm not aware of anyone else actively working on documentation at this
time other than me, and I'm mostly just working on cleaning up/improving
wiki pages we already have.  

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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