[Qgis-community-team] QGIS 1.0 Manual status and some proposed new additions

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Folks (cc PSC, Sindile for your information)

We are putting out a QGIS 1.0.0 Preview II release. After a week or so
for comments, we will freeze the API which puts us another step closer
to release - hopefully around end December if we can get the critical
bugs tamed by then.

1) I am busy updating all of the C++ tutorials on blog.qgis.org to
conform to the new API and to use CMake for the build system. I am
thinking of coverting the tutorials to txt2tags format with an eye to
generating LaTeX for inclusion into the manual. I envisage adding a
section / chapter at the back called 'QGIS for Developers'. How do
others feel about this?

2) In addition I am in the process of negotiating a contract with one of
our provincial governments to write GIS tutorial documentation for
K10-K12 school pupils. The documentation will cover basic GIS principles
and provide exercises where these principles can be applied in practice
using QGIS. There will also be accompanying screencasts which can be
packaged onto CD and made available online. One of the stipulations for
the contract is that the materials should be released under an open
source license (probably Creative Commons) and should be made available
for inclusion into the QGIS manual. As I envisage it, the manual would
then have three basic parts:

GIS Fundamentals
Using QGIS
QGIS for developers

My great hope is that after I have created this resource, it can make
its way into the QGIS manual and be used in an educational context all
around the world, and that educators around the world will contribute to
growing this resource. At this stage the contract is not finalised and
so may not happen, but assuming it does, I would like to know how the
community team feels about my proposal.

3) I have been drafting a release roadmap for beyond QGIS 1.0 that may
be of interest to the Community Team. Hopefully this document will
somewhat address the issue that has been raised in the past that there
is lacking a 'big picture' roadmap for the QGIS release strategy.

http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/ReleaseRoadmap

One of the proposals in this document is that the documentation team
only revise the documentation with each LTS (long term support) release
so that you can have less frequent releases and longer periods for
consolidation and translation. Please let me know what you think,
ideally via comments appended to the bottom of the above mentioned wiki
page.

4) Finally I am wondering if the community team could consider putting
out a 'Preview Release' of the manual (a simple pdf available for
general download). This will help people not directly involved in the
day to day work of the manual get a feel for where we are, what the gaps
are, and hopefully stimulate contributions and corrections. I can add it
to download.qgis.org if someone could be so kind as to generate a pdf.

Keep up the good work all!

Regards



-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
==============================================
Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about:
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Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
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