From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Sep 19 14:20: 7 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from lists.blarg.net (lists.blarg.net [206.124.128.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E931337B418 for ; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 14:20:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thig.blarg.net (thig.blarg.net [206.124.128.18]) by lists.blarg.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3509FBCFC; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 14:20:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([206.124.139.115]) by thig.blarg.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA06413; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 14:19:59 -0700 Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.11.3/8.11.3) id f8JLJIh47836; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 14:19:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@blarg.net) To: Wouter Van Hemel Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: help References: From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 19 Sep 2001 14:19:16 -0700 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Lines: 44 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Wouter Van Hemel writes: > Hello, > > I'd like to contribute to freebsd - long-term even if the response is > good. I'm not much of a c-programmer (my c-skills suck seriously), but I > know lots of admin'ing *nix systems, graphic design, html, perl, shell > scripting, etc, as long as I don't actually have to write c :) > > So, I first turn to this list to inquire if any help is needed. > > I've already a short section about keys and inputrc in mind (I get asked > often about that)... Any comments? Yeah: I'm suprised nobody has responded already. Maybe they've gone off-list. I'm just a recent convert but here's my suggestions: One of the most important things about an OS is the quality of its documentation as that has a lot to do with the amount of time required by users to accomplish a task they set out to do. FreeBSD has relatively good documentation, but it could be MUCH better. You almost can't go wrong tackling any documentation project you stumble across. You might get your feet wet by reading some documentation Problem Reports (PRs) at the web site and developing some patches to implement a fix. You can get help on this list, of course. If you're looking for heavier-duty work, you can learn how to mark up and build the formal documentation and help with that. Or, you might investigate The Meta Project which seems to need some help developing a tool to help users locate information/documentation, a thing which would greatly advance the ease of use of the system if it works out. (I suspect that it uses mostly scripting code.) People have a tough time finding the good info that they already have on their systems (or out on the net). http://www.freebsdzine.org/200103/ http://cantaforda.com/Meta/ http://www.cfcl.com/twiki/bin/view/Meta The FreeBSD Handbook and the Documentation Project part of the web site have more suggestions, if you missed those. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message