[Qgis-community-team] Call for applications: QGIS Manual Update and Improvement

[Otto Dassau]

Dear QGIS community,

In the last few years we have been steadily improving the amount of funding
we are able to accumulate in the QGIS project. Our goal in obtaining funding
is always to 'make QGIS better'. Up until now we have focussed funding on
high profile aspects of the project: Funding regular hackfests, paying for
bug fixing work prior to releases, funding infrastructure such as servers,
domain name registrations etc. 

With improved funding levels we now have the opportunity to also start
addressing some of the many less obvious components of QGIS that badly need
attention, but often don't attract volunteers. In our PSC meetings it was
agreed that we would start this initiative by funding one or more
experienced users to improve the QGIS manual. Here, briefly, is the vision:

As an experienced QGIS user you currently have two main resources: The QGIS
manual and the QGIS training manual. In this call we focus on the manual,
which is already an excellent resource on available functionality in QGIS.
The challenge is to keep it synchronised with all new features, and examples
and figures often run the risk of being out of date. This is the case
already for several chapters of the manual for the latest QGIS releases and
we want to start optimizing this.

We would love to see the QGIS manual providing a readable narrative
explaining the purpose (with images and illustrations if needed) of each
feature. It can also provide short sample snippet where useful, which in
many cases you can simply cut and paste into your code and then tweak to get
started.

For this funded effort we are thus seeking one or more individuals to lay
the foundation for this work:

* verify and improve the norms and guidelines of the documentation and
  especially its update process together with the PSC.
* update the manual to include all features that are available within the
  latest QGIS release (2.12).
* update figures, if necessary according to the defined guidelines (size,
  desktop-environment, resolution,...).
* populate the manual with further short examples and improved descriptions,
  without competing with the training manual.
* do these in a nice clear and concise writing style, taking inspiration
  from other software manuals, if available.

If you think this is something you are able to do, please contact the QGIS
PSC using this form and let us know!

http://goo.gl/forms/18vTEOg7Be

Best wishes,
Otto