[Koha-devel] Koha Documentation

[Joshua M. Ferraro]

Hi all,

I've given some thought to the current state of Koha documentation.
We currently have the following documentation:

1. Koha Intranet help (built in [?] at top right of interface), not
complete, not well maintained.

At dev week, we discussed using the wiki as a means of updating the
onlinehelp for the Intranet (point #3 above), any progress on that
front? Do we have a script to convert wiki -> templates ? Do we all
still feel that's the best way to improve the online help?

2. wiki.koha.org, easy to edit (when working), not very authoritative,
not well organized.

I think the wiki is always going to be a great resource for developers,
but probably not the best for users.

3. kohadocs.org, somewhat authoritative, but slow to update, and only
a few people with the know-how to use Freemind to generate the XML,
etc.

In looking around at other projects' User's Guides, one that stands
out in my mind as having the ideal features is MySQL:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/

I'll try to summarize what I like about their Manual help:

1. each page has a version attached to it, so you can be looking at
docs for Disaster Recovery for version 5.0:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/disaster-prevention.html

And you can click on '4.1' to see that page as it applies for version
4.1.

2. Users can add comments to ask questions or add additional info
to the bottom of each page:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/backup-recovery.html

3. There is a MySQL print manual, which I assume is generated from their
online documentation (I could be wrong though). Having a print version
of the manual is a huge advantage.

The one thing missing from the MySQL manual is a way to translate
pages.

At LibLime, we run our website off of Plone (http://plone.org), which
I think would allow us to do at least some of the nice things that
MySQL can do, along with allowing for translation of each page. Before
I invest too much time investigating what would be involved in
customizing Plone for Koha's documentation, does anyone have any other
ideas for how a new User's Guide should be structured, or what software
would be good to try?

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
address@hidden |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS