[SeasonOfDocs] formats, tools, workflows

Mon Jul 15 12:36:34 PDT 2019

On the topic of this survey, I don't understand whether we're talking about
markup that contributors to this project would use, or the presumed
language of the end-users for the templates. (Do we need to think about
markup language of end-users?)

Have we been considering something like a buildable site? That seems
exponentially more complicated than a literal template.

Along that line of inquiry: What sort of deliverables will this project
create?

I have been thinking that end users would get the most help from a template
that looks like a document outline, and that loosely describes what ought
to be included. That would be platform- and language-agnostic, and would
focus on the main benefit of this project without getting bogged down in a
lot of technical questions.

For example:

[image: Screen Shot 2019-07-15 at 11.54.11 AM.png]
[. . .]

(This example applies to an API, although I know the templates don't have
to be that specific. It's also in markdown, but I don't see any reason why
an HTML presentation of the outline wouldn't work.)

In addition to a plain outline, I would also advocate for offering a model
of a Minimum Viable Docset. I've been talking to people about what is
included in the MVD when you roll out a new product. I've noticed that
mature products are frequently lacking key documentation features that
should have been included in the beginning, and it seems that having a
checklist of what should be there, would make quite a difference.

(I'm sure the MVD would be slightly different for an API, a cloud-based
product, and a customer-hosted product.)

I should add that many developers I've talked to at Write the Docs are
looking for this kind of direction. They want to know what sort of document
to create and what goes in it, because they need just enough structure to
send them in the right direction. So an MVD model and a set of document
outlines would answer most of their questions.

I hope it's not too soon, to dig into the nitty gritty details of
documentation templates.

Clarence

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 8:12 AM Stephanie Blotner <sblotner59 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I agree that a survey could be helpful.
>
> Anecdotally, where I've worked most engineers prefer Markdown.
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 6:59 AM Erin McKean <emckean at google.com> wrote:
>
>> It sounds like a high-value task might be doing a survey around what
>> developers (as opposed to professional technical writers) prefer, since
>> they are our target audience ... :)
>>
>> I agree with Jennifer's point that people who prefer RST or AsciiDoc are
>> more used to doing conversions than the other way around. I am strongly in
>> favor of markdown (in any flavor) for this reason.
>>
>> Erin
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 6:55 AM Jennifer Rondeau <
>> jennifer.rondeau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm inclined to agree with Jo's recommendation of markdown also, at
>>> least for content that we don't publish directly on the WtD website.
>>>
>>> BUT Felicity asked about data for use of lightweight markup languages --
>>> to the best of my somewhat but not entirely limited knowledge, there isn't
>>> real data, only folk wisdom that developers prefer markdown because it's
>>> simpler. But every time I've seen that proposition articulated, devs come
>>> out of the woodwork protesting that no, they want to use only the most
>>> appropriate tool and are happy to switch to something else. That's been my
>>> direct experience as well, but YMMV.
>>>
>>> That said, we've got not much more than folk wisdom to go on, hence my
>>> recommendation of markdown. I also think that if we deliver templates in
>>> markdown (which we'll need to mark up specially for them to render in the
>>> browser anyway -- see inter alia the templates for the Kubernetes docs, at
>>> https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/master/content/en/docs/contribute/style/page-templates.md),
>>> people accustomed to working in rST or AsciiDoc will be more adept at
>>> translating into their preferred markup language than the other way around.
>>> We could also skip the rendering-markdown-literally approach to templates.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 9:25 AM Jo Cook <jo.k.cook at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> HI All,
>>>>
>>>> I'm in favour of keeping things as simple as possible, for long term
>>>> maintenance and for lowering the barrier for potential contributors. I
>>>> think also that we need to be clear whether we're talking about the format
>>>> of the files we use to build the website (which I guess includes the
>>>> documentation on best practices) and the format that we provide the
>>>> templates in.
>>>>
>>>> I've got experience of both markdown and rst in both respects, and I
>>>> think there are pros and cons to both, but all things being equal, I'd tend
>>>> to choose markdown for the simplicity of the format. I'm a big fan of the
>>>> markdown -> gh-pages approach for collaborative websites- it's what we use
>>>> for uk.osgeo.org and it works really well for that where there's a
>>>> distributed team of around 15 people with committing rights and varying
>>>> levels of technical experience.
>>>>
>>>> All the best
>>>>
>>>> Jo
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 1:42 AM Felicity Brand <felicitybrand at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Lots of food for thought here!
>>>>>
>>>>> Are there any stats on usage/most popular languages? Just curious.
>>>>>
>>>>> Then we could rely on stats to choose one option to launch with, and
>>>>> be reactive when folks say something like "this is great but I wish it was
>>>>> in AsciiDoc".
>>>>>
>>>>> We can be poised with a plan to build out into other languages/formats.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, are there converters?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 8:30 AM Cameron Shorter <
>>>>> cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks Jennifer,
>>>>>> Ideally, TheGoodDocsProject writers shouldn't have to worry about
>>>>>> formats and tools. My preference is to highlight that we have a problem
>>>>>> with the limited options to date, find a workaround, and park the problem
>>>>>> hoping that some techies will step up and solve it for us.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm mildly in favour of using RST with git to start with. Of note,
>>>>>> the workflow that I"m seeing emerging has been  RST -> HTML -> Google Doc
>>>>>> (+Spell/Grammer Checkers+Grammerly) -> Google Doc + Review comments and
>>>>>> track changes ->  RST.
>>>>>> I suspect this might be our best option to date. It is messy and I'm
>>>>>> hoping we can find something better in the long term.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 01:22, Jennifer Rondeau <
>>>>>> jennifer.rondeau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cameron asked me to follow up on my comment at the end of our last
>>>>>>> video conference about the fact that the Write the Docs website publishes
>>>>>>> with Sphinx -- using Read the Docs, which in case anybody isn't familiar is
>>>>>>> also Eric's project -- from mostly reStructuredText format in the
>>>>>>> repository (there's still some markdown, but much of it has been moved over
>>>>>>> to rST).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I mentioned the WtD toolchain because Erin's also mentioned Docsy,
>>>>>>> which is Hugo and therefore requires markdown. We've also discussed
>>>>>>> templates, but not really mentioned a markup language for said templates
>>>>>>> (unless I've missed something, which is a distinct possibility :-)).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's my hope that we can find a way to provide tools, templates, and
>>>>>>> best practices guides without requiring consumers of our efforts to focus
>>>>>>> on the markup language. Within the WtD community, there's considerable
>>>>>>> interest in AsciiDoc as well as rST and Markdown.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But I don't have definite ideas about how to address the situation
>>>>>>> -- at least not yet. The only way forward I see *at the moment* -- while we
>>>>>>> figure out solutions -- is to work in Markdown in one of the repos in the
>>>>>>> Good Docs Project GH org, probably the structure repo.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Some fragments/thoughts about parts of how we might proceed (nothing
>>>>>>> mutually exclusive or complete):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    - keep some of our content and templates in TGDP repo and
>>>>>>>    publish to HTML that we can incorporate into the WtD website
>>>>>>>    - write wrapper rST content in the /guide directory in the WtD
>>>>>>>    repo
>>>>>>>    - write most of our content in rST in the WtD /guide directory
>>>>>>>    but point to other resources that we also maintain (as well as resources we
>>>>>>>    don't maintain?)
>>>>>>>    - build a sample Docsy project in a separate repo that
>>>>>>>    demonstrates specific Hugo/markdown best practices (although I think the
>>>>>>>    Docsy project already has a fair amount of this worked out -- but we could
>>>>>>>    build on it and point back to TGDP pages)
>>>>>>>    - do something similar to the previous item for
>>>>>>>    AsciiDoc/Asciidoctor (get someone heavily involved in this community to
>>>>>>>    contribute here -- or we could point to analogous resources elsewhere)
>>>>>>>    - produce templates written in all three lightweight markup
>>>>>>>    languages (with appropriate gotchas for differences, including differences
>>>>>>>    in flavors of Markdown)
>>>>>>>    - Produce SSG-specific variants on templates (this is a
>>>>>>>    variation on the previous item)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I ... think that's enough for now. I hope it's enough to show
>>>>>>> primarily why I raised the issue this early in the project, and I hope it
>>>>>>> helps everybody who's interested continue to brainstorm about how we want
>>>>>>> to move forward.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> See you all online/in video!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jennifer
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> SeasonOfDocs mailing list
>>>>>>> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Cameron Shorter
>>>>>> Technology Demystifier
>>>>>> Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>>>>>>
>>>>>> M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> SeasonOfDocs mailing list
>>>>>> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> SeasonOfDocs mailing list
>>>>> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ------------------------
>>>> http://about.me/jocook
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>>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Erin McKean | Developer Relations Program Manager, Open Source Strategy |
>>  emckean at google.com | she/her
>>
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>> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
>>
>
>
> --
> Stephanie Blotner
>
> _______________________________________________
> SeasonOfDocs mailing list
> SeasonOfDocs at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/seasonofdocs
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