The XOOPS Documentation Team is in charge of:
Setting standards for all official documentation, both for developers and for end users
Writing, with the help of all other teams, whatever documentation is needed to illustrate in depth the features that XOOPS offers to all.
Managing the preparation and availability of language packs for the core and the modules
Managing user’s input and participation in the process of documenting XOOPS.
Creating and managing the templates for all official documentation
What do we need to accomplish the things proposed in this document? A lot
Enough time to build templates and documents. This will be an incremental effort, and we’ll need to take our time if we want quality products
A lot of feedback, positive feedback from everybody
A lot of help, both to write, to edit, to review and to produce drafts and final documents
A XOOPS site, centered on a Wiki to receive users’ ideas and to write early drafts, and with a document repository to include alpha versions of the final documents, which should be housed in the main XOOPS site with links in the other network sites.
I propose the use of a convention to designate different documents, as a way of keeping some order. At first it will seem overhead, but over time it’ll show its value. A possible format has the following structure:
XG-0001-0903-0.90
The meaning is as follows
| X | A letter that indicates this is XOOPS documentation. |
| G | A letter to indicate the type of document:
|
| 0001 | A consecutive numeral to indicate the document’s position in the official repository. |
| 0903 | The month and year number for the document in its present version[a]. |
| 0.90 | A two decimal number to indicate the document’s present version[a]. |
[a] In the current implementation the month and year and the version is omitted. | |
The base format for the official documents is DocBook XML (UTF-8 coded). From these base files the different outputs are generated by a special build process. The different output formats are as follows
XHTML - A XHTML output which is converted from the original XHTML for online presentation on the XOOPS site.
XHTML - It's in a chunked (one file per chapter or section) XHMTL version.
CHM - This is a compressed HTML, also known as HTML-Help.
PDF - At the moment it is only A4 double sided. We hope we can add also letter, and maybe both as single and double sided versions.
The general principle behind the documentation effort rests on the idea of creating different documents for different users. We need to see after the needs of
Developers (core, theme and module developers
General users (webmasters with live sites running XOOPS)
Newbies (first time users
This would be the core set of documents we need to be strongly positioned. Of course we can start with a lot less, but I’d say we do need a target to aspire to, and this list seems to be a very worthy target
General Documents
(XR-002) A brief history of XOOPS
(XR-003) The XOOPS Universe
(XL-001) The XOOPS GNU/GPL License
(XL-002) Terms and conditions of us
(XL-003) XOOPS Privacy Statement
(XL-004) The XOOPS Foundation Charter
(XR-005) XOOPS Contributors
NOTICE: For this particular area this is a proposal to the developers. The more technical documents would be under the devs’ direct control, as asked by the devs themselves. This is an area I don’t know much about, so this is mainly a kind of wish list. Please be aware that these lists include both long and short documents. Some of the documents proposed here are only a few paragraphs long, while others are booklets or complete handbooks
Roadmaps
(XD-002) XOOPS Modules Roadmap
(XD-003) XOOPS Themes Roadmap
(XD-004) XOOPS Quality Control Roadmap
(XD-005) XOOPS Support Roadmap
(XD-007) XOOPS Community Relations Roadmap
(XD-008) XOOPS Product Development Roadmap
Technical documents
(XD-101) XOOPS Core Functions
(XD-102) XOOPS Base Documents - phpDocs
(XD-103) XOOPS Base Documents - phpXRef
(XD-104) XOOPS API
(XD-104) XOOPS Javascript Functions
Standards
(XD-201) XOOPS Coding Standars
(XD-202) XOOPS File Headers
(XD-203) XOOPS Theme Documentation
(XD-204) XOOPS Theme Certification
(XD-205) XOOPS Module Documentation
(XD-206) XOOPS Module Certification
Installation and usage
(XU-001) XOOPS Requirements
(XU-003) XOOPS Operations Guide
(XU-004) Troubleshooting XOOPS
Development at user level
(XU-101) XOOPS Module Development Guide
(XU-102) XOOPS Theme Development Guide
(XU-103) XOOPS CVS Access Guide
Assorted subjects
(XU-201) The XOOPS Module Registry
(XU-202) The XOOPS Theme Registry
(XU-203) XOOPS Hacks
(XU-204) An introduction to XOOPS and Smarty
(XU-205) The XOOPS Glossary
(XU-206) Best of XOOPS' Forums
(XU-207) An assortment of XOOPS FAQs
(XU-208) Favorite Code Snippet
Visual introductions
(XN-002) A XOOPS' Webmaster Basic Manual
Anatomy Series
(XN-101) Anatomy of a XOOPS Site
(XN-102) Anatomy of a Modul
(XN-104) Anatomy of a theme.html fil
(XN-105) Anatomy of a style.css fil
How do I... Series
(XN-201) How do I... install XOOPS?
(XN-202) How do I... customize a site using XOOPS?
(XN-203) How do I... manage modules
(XN-204) How do I... manage blocks
(XN-205) How do I... manage users
(XN-206) How do I... manage content
(XN-207) How do I... manage themes
(XN-208) How do I... manage images
(XN-209) How do I... create multilingual sites