[MPlayer-dev-eng] documentation policy

[Arpi]

Hi,

> Over the past months we have moved from one documentation maintainer
> to a team of documentation maintainers, but I believe we have to take
> this notion one step further.  Gabucino has very little net connection
> atm (IIRC), I am buried in work, studies and whatnot, Jonas is doing a
> great job on the man page, but still the ToDo-list is growing and not
> shrinking.  In short, we need to distribute this on more shoulders.  I
> would therefore like to propose that we start some sort of
> documentation policy.  All developers should aim to keep the docs up
> to date when they add options or modify existing ones.  We could also
disagree
i don't mean i don't agree :) but i know it will not work.
developers don't like, don't have time (and sometimes don't even know)
to write docs.

> ask this of people sending in patches and add it to patches.txt.  The
> point is that if XYZ adds some option to MPlayer extending the man
> page by a few lines, this should not take XYZ more than a few minutes
> and be an accurate description.  In contrast, if I (or one of the
> other docs maintainers) try to do this, I will have to RTFS (and
> understand) and maybe also ask google, the mailing lists or on IRC.
why?
when someone send a patch with new options, he describes how does it work
in the main containing the patch.
if some cvs developer adds a new option, he includes short description in
cvslog, or write a longer ANNOUNCE message to the deveng or users maillist.
you should catch them, do rewording, formatting and commit ;)
if you don't understand sth, ask on IRC or ml. you don't have to rtfs.

also, it's good if developers sometimes review the manpage, at least reading
the cvslog, and notify the doc team if something was misuderstood or wrong.


A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

--
Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux - http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu