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Date:      19 Sep 2001 14:19:16 -0700
From:      swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen)
To:        Wouter Van Hemel <wvhemel@vub.ac.be>
Cc:        freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: help
Message-ID:  <o6ofo65163.fo6@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.40.0109182110270.273-100000@cocaine.cryolabs.net>
References:  <Pine.LNX.4.40.0109182110270.273-100000@cocaine.cryolabs.net>

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Wouter Van Hemel <wvhemel@vub.ac.be> 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.

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