Feature proposal: New, Standard Documentation System

[Basil Mohamed Gohar]

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 02:42 -0800, Karsten Wade wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 12:53:34PM +0200, Basil Mohamed Gohar wrote:
> > 
> > Should I present this idea to the docs project, pending the agreement of
> > most, if not all, those involved in this discussion?  I'm mulling the
> > idea of even heading it, if no one else is more appropriate for the
> > task...
> 
> That is definitely the right attitude, thanks.  "Better man pages" was
> on the list of Red Hat's various technical writing teams since
> ... 1999?  The problem is resources -- it is a huge task for a small
> group of people to wade through.
> 
> As Rahul pointed out, mitwi is an example of working to make man pages
> accessible from a documentation site without manual intervention.  It
> came from a goal of putting a simpler (wiki) interface in front of man
> pages, with automagic conversion behind the scenes.
> 
> But even with the easiest tools we can muster, it is still a giant cat
> herding effort to get packagers behind man page improvements.  What is
> needed is that can-do attitude, followed by the actual doing, of
> course. :)
> 
> - Karsten
Karsten,

So, do I need to take any formal steps to move forward?

This would be my most significant involvement with Fedora if I do take
it up to some degree.   Not being a significant developer (aside from
PHP), this is about the best way I can contribute back to the project
right now.

My idea is that at least I can kick-off a sustainable system that could
work to fill-in the missing man pages and establish a culture within the
already existing upstream-positive culture of Fedora to contribute back
man pages as well as general patches & code.  Having a wiki-like or
other system in place to work on man pages would be a great way for
upstream to verify & even contribute back to their own pages (think
something like Launchpad, but focused just on documentation).

Okay, so back to my main point: is there an official step I have to take
to start an initiative like this?