post-GDP doc team

[Graham Percival]

Hi Trevor, Patick, Jonathan, Carl, Francisco, and Neil,

Please read this email carefully.  Other -devel people can simply
skim it.


I'm now finished my thesis, course work, and everything I need to
get done until my thesis defense on Aug 19th.  However, this has
caused me to feel immensely fatigued and unenthusiastic about
lilypond work.  An unhappy personal event has contributed greatly
to this, but since I'll be totally gone in a few weeks anyway,
this is a good time to put the last phase of GDP into action.

After GDP, I anticipate that we'll have 6 doc writers left:
Trevor - LM 1-5, NR 3-6.
*Patrick - NR work
*Jonathan - NR work
Carl - NR work and devel
Francisco - possibly NR work, possibly translating
Neil - LSR updating, general technical fixit guy

These people are all using git, building the docs by themselves,
have been submitting numerous high-quality patches recently.  In
many cases, I've stopped even spending 10 seconds glancing through
their patches before committing them.


You guys are now on your own.  Stop sending me email.  :)  If
you're not already subscribed to lilypond-devel, please do so now.
Also, please try to keep discussions on the list.  Even if you
think it's only relevant to two people (say, Francisco and Trevor
discussing how to split docs abut polyphony between LM 3 and NR
1.5), it's useful to keep it on -devel so other people can keep
informed.  Also, this keeps the discussion archived, in case
anybody needs/wants to look at the history to find out why we did
certain things.

*Patrick, *Jonathan: please email patches to Neil; he'll apply them
to git for you.  I'm happy to sponsor you for direct git access,
once we figure out how to handle git for doc-writers (see
the "separate git tree for docs" email).


I'll also urge you to work together more.  Most of you have
emailed me privately at some point, expressing disappointment that
your requests for doc review/proofreading haven't gathered
any responses.  Well, the fact is that most users don't seem
interested in helping with the docs, even to the extent of reading
them.  :|    Maybe this is just a summer blip (everybody's on
vacation), or maybe it's because all our docs are so perfect that
nobody can find anything to complain about.

Anyway, I'd urge you to read each other's sections -- and if you
can't find any problems, send a one-line "looks good to me!"
email.  Speaking from experience, it really sucks when you've
finished a 40-hour job and nobody says anything about it.  Yes,
this will cut into your own doc-writing time... but I think it's
an ok compromise to spend the time reading each other's work.
Keeps up morale and whatnot.  Keeping each other motivated to work
on lilypond will greatly reduce the workload of each individual
person.

When you post requests for review, I may or may not read them.
>From now on, I'm not going to force myself to do anything for you
guys, so if I'm not in the mood to read about Rhythms or Fretted
strings, I'm not going to.  Between the six of you, you have
enough of a grasp of the doc policies and the reasons behind them.
And if there's any case where you think it's worth breaking the
policies, it really doesn't make sense for me to complain about
it.


Invidual notes:

Trevor: you know much better than I how LM 3-5 and NR 3-6 look.
Do whatever you want before 2.12 is out, and then continue doing
whatever you want.

Patrick: please finish NR 1.3, 1.6, and then spend 2-3 hours on
the formatting for NR 3 input.tely.  I told Trevor focus on the
material and ignore formatting issues.

Jonathan: fretted strings is almost finished.  I don't have
anybody at all working on Winds; do you have any familiarity with
these instruments?  Failing that, I'm sure that we can use you to
fill in other NR sections that are in danger of not being
finished.  If you need any technical help for the last stage of
git stuff, see advanced-tech.txt on the GDP website or email Neil.

Carl: announce Chords yourself when you think it's ready.  If you
need/want help with Rhythms, ask Jonathan.  I know that you want
to do more devel stuff, but I'd still like you to be a member of
the doc team after GDP, even if you only review/comment on the
work of other people.

Francisco: I don't know if you want to keep on working on the
English docs after GDP.  I highly doubt that vocal.itely will be
finished within 4 weeks, but after that's done you might want to
switch back to translating.  However, like Carl, I hope you'll
still review/comment on other doc work.

Neil: having a specific "technical help guy" is *very* useful; as
I'm sure you've discovered, keeping up to date on all this is a
full-time (volunteer) job by itself.  Please take a look at
technical-todo.txt on the GDP page, and copy all those issues to
your own list.  If anything doesn't make sense, ask me about it...
although some of those issues were from a year ago, and may not
still be valid.  I'm going to take down that page as soon as I've
heard that you've got it.


I'll still have git access until Aug 22.  On the 23rd, I'm flying
to Belfast for ICMC 2008, and will only have access to email.  If
there's a real need for me, I can still step in and do stuff, but
I'd really rather let you guys sort it out between yourselves.

I will continue to handle the other GDP contributors until Aug
18th (the day before my thesis defense).  I'm not certain what we
want to do with other contributors after that -- handling
non-technical doc writers is a full-time job in itself.  I'm not
certain if any of you want to do this instead of writing docs
yourself -- and I'm also not certain if that would be a good
trade-off in any case.

For now, I'm going to announce that other doc contributors have
only 3 weeks left to help.  At that time, if anybody is still
eager to help, we'll see what we can work out.

Cheers,
- Graham