Re: moving toward a 3.0 release

[Søren Hauberg]

ons, 27 09 2006 kl. 21:43 +0200, skrev David Bateman:
[snip -- graphics stuff]
> In any case the major point to address for the non graphic types amongst
> us is documentation and bugs. I'd vote for a complete restructuring of
> the manual as I don't think chapters made up from the help of the
> functions is much use. Something like the mkdoc/mktexi combination in
> octave-forge might be used to automatically create a function reference
> for the 3.0 release, and the main body might be consecrated to examples
> of uses of the functionality. I think some of the early chapters of the
> existing manual aren't bad, and their is a fair amount of raw material
> for a new section of oct-files with coda + del segna, and the sparse
> section of the manual seems ok if the oct-file section goes to a special
> appendix and the function reference to a more general section covering
> all of octave. Some sections like optimization are rather empty
> though... In any case John, I think perhaps the first step with the
> documentation is to fix a table of contents and a sketch of the desired
> contents and ask for volonteers to help write the chapters, and in that
> way I believe the document might come together rapidly.
I'm one of the weirdos who actually like to write documentation, so I
wouldn't mind writing documentation covering the parts I actually know
something about. However, English is not my native language, and I
suspect that's the case for many others on the lists. I think there is a
need for somebody with native English skills to proof-read everything.
How has this been handled in the past?

Another thought. I think that having a monolithic manual isn't the right
choice for Octave. I think we need several online tutorials that cover
various aspects of using Octave. These tutorials could then be combined
with a function reference, which would result in a manual.

Anyway, I'm sidetracking again (second time in an hour) -- sorry.

Søren