A Techie Tech Writer Blog

I'm in Owen Sound, Ontario, attending the Writing Open Source conference. Here's a recap of Day Two, the "unconference" portion of the meeting.

After another great breakfast at Ginger Press (sticky buns!), we headed back to the library by way of a craft fair and farmers market. Several folks bought jugs of Canadian maple syrup, while I got some bison jerky (less potential mess in the luggage).

Shaun McCance started things off by showing some of the tools that the Gnome documentation team is working on and with. Pulse is a status tracker that works by crawling information sources like source repos and mailing lists. Project Mallard is a documentation system that includes several pieces, but most significantly an XML schema, also known as Mallard, which is intended as a simpler, topic-oriented alternative to DocBook. ("Mallard" was supposed to be a code name, but stuck. The relationship of this name to DocBook is left as an exercise for the reader.) The question that immediately occurred to both Lynda Chiotti and me was, "Why not use DITA?" The answer seems to be that DITA did not have as much traction several years ago when Shaun started Mallard, and Mallard is now tailored to meet the specific needs of Gnome. Since he's focused on Gnome, he's not much interested in making Project Mallard a more general-purpose system. But since it's open source, it could be a starting point for developing much-needed front-end tools for DITA.

The discussion around Gnome led into a discussion of translation, and how to encourage translators to work on docs as well as UI. For example, 86% of Gnome 2.26 UI strings are translated into Arabic, but only 7% of docs. That led
into a discussion of raising the profile of documentation within open source projects generally. One idea that came out of today's discussions was to turn the conference website into a portal for discussion and resource-sharing for open source documentation across projects.

At this point, we broke for lunch, which included giant gingerbread man cookies for dessert. After lunch, I walked along the Syndenham River to Owen Sound Harbour, and took pictures of the grain elevators, at the behest of my brother, who sells grain elevator buckets.

After lunch, I presented about FLOSS Manuals and the book sprint approach. There was interest in using the FLOSS Manuals site for some doc projects, such as short, targeted guides for Gnome development. Folks were also interested in the planned re-implementation of FLOSS Manuals, which will be based on Django. Emma's post about it on identi.ca immediately turned up a remote volunteer interested in contributing to the effort.

I also did a little show-and-tell of pydocweb, just because I think it's so cool to be able to update API docs through a wiki.

Next, Dru Lavigne shared what she has learned about setting up a certification program for BSD. It's hugely complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Now I can see why STC has not seriously pursued this, despite the idea recurring perennially.

Before dinner, we had a field trip to Inglis Falls, just outside of town, at the urging of Mayor Ruth Lovell Stanners, who accompanied the group. Inglis Falls is where the Sydenham River cascades over the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, the same geological formation responsible for Niagara Falls. There was once a grist mill at the falls, of which only two millstones remain.

Back at the Ginger Press, dinner included free-range chicken with home-made relish, and carrot cake. The group hung out at the cafe late into the evening, long after the beer and wine ran out. Despite this, much hilarity ensued. I suppose we were giddy at being with other people who are passionate about both open source software and documentation. Not since I was in high school have I seen a group of people get so silly with so little in the way of pychoactive substances. It appears that mascot of the new website will be a woolly mammoth.

On the other hand, maybe there's something in the air or the water here. On my way back to my hotel, I saw a group of about four guys, probably in their twenties, skipping down the sidewalk to their car. They were not with WOS, but may have emerged from a karaoke bar. I guess Owen Sound just makes people happy.