Fedora-tour: A Fedora Feature for new users

[Ryan Rix]

Hello Docs team,

Ankur Sinha (fas username ankursinha, cc'd) and I have recently embarked on a 
new project that is set, at the moment, to be included as a Fedora 14, or 
possibly Fedora 13 feature, designed to give new and old users a tour of the 
Fedora Project, Fedora Linux and their recently installed software. It would 
add an option to the last form of Firstboot with the option to start this at 
first login, serving as an equivalent to Windows' "Welcome Center" (I
don't 
have any pictures of this, unfortunately, for reference) and basically just 
introduce Fedora users to their new desktop, and the project as a whole, 
including ways to contribute, if they are interested. Naturally, such a 
project will take the involvement of many teams, including the Documentation 
team.

When we have the final product nearing completion, we will need some content 
to put into it, naturally. Some of this will most likely come from the various 
SIGs within Fedora, but much of it will have to come from the Docs project.

What Ankur and I were considering was to implement a visual introduction to 
the application, with a tree (like, an actual tree with branches, etc) where 
each leaf is a separate "part" of Fedora (General Overview, FAQ, Getting Help, 
GNOME overview, KDE overview, LXDE overview, Development Tools, Joining Fedora 
etc) all installable as separate packages, pulled in, most likely, by 
installing packages from that Group in anaconda. 

Naturally, we want to make it as easy for the docs team, and the various SIGs 
to add initial content and update/overhaul it each release. What tools would 
the Docs team recommend we use as a backend for this? We could possibly 
introduce some mediawiki-esque markup syntax, straight html, or Docbook XML, 
along with anything else that is suggested and agreed upon. We're still in the 
early design phase of this project and are open to any suggestions.

Thank you for your time,
Ryan Rix
Fas user rrix

-- 
Ryan Rix
Fedora KDE SIG Member, Phoenix AZ Ambassador, News KDE Beat writer

http://hackersramblings.wordpress.com | http://identi.ca/phrkonaleash
XMPP: phrkonaleash(a)gmail.com          | MSN: phrkonaleash(a)yahoo.com
AIM:  phrkonaleash                    | Yahoo: phrkonaleash
IRC:  PhrkOnLsh(a)irc.freenode.net/#srcedit,#plugaz,#fedora-kde and
      countless other FOSS channels.

[Mel Chua]

>  Naturally, we want to make it as easy for the docs team, and the
> various SIGs
>  to add initial content and update/overhaul it each release. What tools would
>  the Docs team recommend we use as a backend for this? We could possibly
>  introduce some mediawiki-esque markup syntax, straight html, or Docbook XML,
>  along with anything else that is suggested and agreed upon. We're still in the
>  early design phase of this project and are open to any suggestions. 
They've also got a project wiki page up at 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora-tour with some more information.

I think some of this email might have be inspired by Karsten's comments 
in https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Fedora-tour (also noted in a 
comment to Ankur's first blog post about this, 
http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/a-new-fedora-project/).

Suggestions floated so far include:

* the wiki (and then apply publican at the end of each release cycle)
* text files versioned in git
* zikula, once it's up

--Mel

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> > Naturally, we want to make it as easy for the docs team, and the
> various
> > SIGs
> > to add initial content and update/overhaul it each release. What tools
> > would
> > the Docs team recommend we use as a backend for this? We could possibly
> > introduce some mediawiki-esque markup syntax, straight html, or Docbook
> > XML,
> > along with anything else that is suggested and agreed upon. We're still in
> > the
> > early design phase of this project and are open to any suggestions.
>
>  They've also got a project wiki page up at
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora-tour with some more information.
>
>  I think some of this email might have be inspired by Karsten's comments in
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Fedora-tour (also noted in a comment to
>  Ankur's first blog post about this,
>  http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/a-new-fedora-project/).
>
>  Suggestions floated so far include:
>
>  * the wiki (and then apply publican at the end of each release cycle)
>  * text files versioned in git
>  * zikula, once it's up 
A quick hack that could help capture the vision of the idea
originators is a mind-map. It should come handy during the design
phase as well.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog>