The goals of the KDE Editorial Team are:
- Compose new documentation for KDE applications and update previous
versions.
- Assist translation teams so that they may effectively and accurately
translate the documentation.
- Ensure that all English documentation is correct and complete with
regards to DocBook markup.
- Recruit new people to write documentation.
The Editorial Process
Find specific information on the Getting Started page.
- The original English documentation is usually written directly by the
members of the English team in collaboration with
the application's author.
- Documentation must be written in English, because most of our
translation teams do not have available people to translate from any other
language. If the author of an application wishes to write documentation for his
program in his mother tongue (german, French, ...), the documentation team for
that language is here to help. It will first be translated into English, and
then the English version will be reviewed by English speakers of the English
team.
- Documentation is written using a markup-language called DocBook. Tools
exist to produce HTML, PostScript, etc... from a DocBook source while preserving
their structure (index, titles, etc). This might be done by the author while
writing, or by another team member after the content is written.
The Translation Process
- The Documentation team is not responsible for the
translations, although we necessarily have close contact with the
translators. If you want to translate documentation, please contact
the responsible team coordinator. You can find this person from
i18n.kde.org.
- The DocBook XML files are turned into gettext message files in CVS,
which the translation teams then translate using their usual toolset. For KDE
this is usually KBabel. You can find more information about the actual
translation process in the Translation Howto
document.
- When a message file is completely translated, a new DocBook file is
created in the target language. When all the files that make up a document are
translated, then an entire User Manual is available in that language.
- Most of this process is handled transparently to us, with scripts that
do the message and final DocBook generation. All we have to do for our part is
write the document. That said, there are some things we can do to make
translation easier, which are discussed in the style guide.
Joining the Team
If you'd like to help with writing, updating or proofreading
documentation, we're happy to welcome you to the team. Just send us a
message at kde-doc-english@kde.org, or
find us on IRC in #kde-docs on irc.freenode.net, and
we'll help you to get started. You can also find information about all
aspects of writing documentation in the Documentation Primer. You don't have
to read all of it before starting, but the first few chapters contain
a short introduction that should help you to find your feet.
It's very important to note that you don't need to learn the tools
and languages that we use in order to help. We can deal with these, if
you can write or update content, or proofread the documentation. A lot
of new contributors find that trying to learn the tools, especially
DocBook, before writing content, just takes too long, and they get
don't get around to writing, which is the interesting part. So, feel
free to send your contributions in plain text when you're starting
out, and think about learning DocBook when you're more comfortable
with writing.
Other Resources
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