Thoughts on how to structure the release notes...

[Edward C. Bailey]

Hello all,

    A while ago, I broached the subject of release notes quality on
fedora-list.  and asked for feedback on ways to make the release notes
better.  One of the subjects mentioned was to make the content more
accessible by splitting things up a bit more, possibly by using RPM's
package groups.

    I personally liked the concept behind that idea, though I thought using
more newbie-friendly groups might be a better choice.  Since the package
groups used by Anaconda are a bit easier to understand, I thought it would
be better to use the groups defined by the comps.xml file.

    My plan (for Fedora Core 2 Test 2) is to structure the release notes to
use the following list of groups.  That doesn't mean every one of these
groups will be present in the release notes -- only that, if something
needs to be said about a given package, that content will be put in the
release notes, under a heading reflecting that package's group.

    For example, if I need to write something about emacs, it'll appear
under the "Emacs" heading.  On the other hand, if nothing needs to be
written about emacs, the "Emacs" heading will not be present in the release
notes.

Here are some of the groups that are currently used in Fedora Core 2 Test
1:

Administration Tools      
Authoring and Publishing     
Base       
Compatibility Arch Development Support    
Compatibility Arch Support     
Core       
DNS Name Server     
Development Libraries      
Development Tools      
Dialup Networking Support     
Editors       
Emacs       
Engineering and Scientific     
FTP Server      
GNOME Desktop Environment     
GNOME Software Development     
Games and Entertainment     
Graphical Internet      
Graphics       
KDE Desktop Environment     
KDE Software Development     
Kernel Development      
Legacy Software Development     
Mail Server      
Network Servers      
News Server      
Office/Productivity       
Printing Support      
Ruby       
SQL Database Server     
Server Configuration Tools     
Sound and Video     
Supported Packages      
System Tools      
Text-based Internet      
Web Server      
Windows File Server     
X Software Development     
X Window System     
XEmacs       

These are not the only groups; there are also groups that relate to the
support of various languages.  There are quite a few, and given that I
doubt there would be much that needs to be written about them, I feel that
it would be easier to compress them into a single "Internationalization
Support" heading.  Here are the groups:

Arabic Support      
Assamese Support      
Bengali Support      
Brazilian Support      
British Support      
Catalan Support      
Chinese Support      
Cyrillic Support      
Czech Support      
Danish Support      
Dutch Support      
Estonian Support      
Finnish Support      
French Support      
German Support      
Greek Support      
Hebrew Support      
Hungarian Support      
ISO8859-2 Support      
ISO8859-9 Support      
Italian Support      
Japanese Support      
Korean Support      
Norwegian Support      
Polish Support      
Portuguese Support      
Romanian Support      
Russian Support      
Serbian Support      
Slovak Support      
Slovenian Support      
Spanish Support      
Swedish Support      
Turkish Support      
Ukrainian Support      

Hmmm.  Of course, if there's not much of a chance that there will be a lot
of content for packages under these groups, maybe it doesn't matter, and if
something noteworthy about the kde-i18n-Hungarian package needs to be said,
perhaps it should be said under the "Hungarian Support" heading... :-)

In any case, what does everyone think?  Is this a good change, a bad
change, or just a change?

                                Ed
-- 
Ed Bailey        Red Hat, Inc.          http://www.redhat.com/