[Shotwell] Contributing to Yorba/Shotwell

[Robert Ancell]

Hi all,

I'm a GNOME Developer and work in the Ubuntu Desktop team.

The help should definitely be written in Mallard format and I can 
confirm it is an order of magnitude easier that the old DocBook format!

All you need is a recent version of Yelp (e.g. Ubuntu 9.10 or higher) 
and a text editor.

The Mallard ten minute guide will teach you all you need:
http://projectmallard.org/about/learn/tenminutes.html

Here are some examples of Mallard help files:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gcalctool/tree/help/C
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~robert-ancell/simple-scan/trunk/files/head%3A/help/C/
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gbrainy/tree/help/C

Feel free to ask me any questions, you can also find me on 
#ubuntu-desktop on freenode as robert-ancell.

--Robert

On 29/05/10 18:32, David Velazquez wrote:
> Please, pardon me if this seems too long, too much like a rant, or just the
> wrong place for this. It's just something I've had in my head as of late.
> I've sent it to this list only for the reason that this is the project I
> would like to help out. Not everything in here applies to Yorba, however, I
> felt it essential so people knew where I was coming from.
>
> I've been an Ubuntu user on and off for a while now and I've always wanted
> to actively contribute to an open source/free software project.
> Unfortunately, most of the time the calls for help are for developers or
> translators. Unfortunately, I know no other languages and am therefore quite
> useless on both fronts. I do, however, enjoy writing (as will be evident by
> the time I'm done here). For this reason I feel like I could help out
> projects with documentation efforts. Even if most users will never read the
> documentation provided it always seems to make the project look more
> polished and professional. Usually when it gets right down to it I get put
> off by one thing or another though, the most common of which seems to be how
> to make that leap from spectator and user to contributor.
>
> Often it seems open source projects are spread out on many different sites
> from Launchpad to Trac to personal websites and a mixture of all three.
> This, coupled with what at first glance seems like a closed off community,
> can present an insurmountable hurdle to the prospective volunteer. In my
> personal experience I see opportunities for assistance, but no clear cut way
> of getting information on where to begin, what to do, or a way of
> collaborating with others so work is not done and redone. Trac might work
> well for developers, but it leaves the lowly folk like me out in the dark.
> Wanting to contribute but not knowing how. Shotwells' own page welcomes
> contributions in the form of artwork, documentation, and more, but to the
> common reader leaves no other information in the form of how to get started,
> what needs working on, or any other information.
>
> I'm not sure what I'm requesting here, other than a more defined path for
> people like me who wish to contribute but might not know where to get
> started or what to get started on. In a broader sense a place for people
> like me to find tasks that can be done and collaborate on them until they
> reach that goal is what comes to mind. A volunteers center of sorts.
>
> I believe there are many others like me who would love to help out their
> favorite project, but due to the very nature of such software they would
> like to help out find it difficult to do so. Centralizing software (which
> Yorba has so nicely done!), laying out defined and specific things which
> need doing (for us non-developers), and providing a strong starting point
> with information on how to get started and where to go for help should all
> serve to increase the (long term) amount of volunteers software like this
> receives.
>
> In short, it's tough to dive head first in and help out wherever help is
> needed. I'm here and would love to contribute to any of Yorbas projects with
> documentation (since this is about all I can do) if I only knew where to
> start.
>
> Dave
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