Documentation Overview
From GnuCash
The GnuCash Project contains several kinds of Documentation. This pages explains the differences.
- Targets
- Where should users search first?
- Where should contributors add information?
Contents
Existing Documentation
Integrated Documents
They are the content of our GitHub repository gnucash-docs, are usually shipped together with the program and accessible by its Help menu.
- Note
- Some distributions split them in a separate package "gnucash-doc" or similar. Then users should install it to have easier access.
- Pros
- Accessible without internet.
- Cons
- Sometimes partially outdated.
The Gnucash-docs consist of two parts:
- gnucash-manual
- is the reference manual describing the GUI elements and their relations.
- gnucash-guide
- contains the tutorial and the concepts guide. Here you can
- learn our terminology and
- the steps to resolve specific tasks.
- Contributors
-
- Requirement
- Dokbook knowledge
- Target
- Finally all important documentation should end here!
Online Documents
- Pros
- Sometimes more recent.
- Cons
- Internet required.
Wiki
- Pros
- Often more recent.
- Cons
- Unreachable in CN because of the Great Firewall.
- Content
-
- Thematic pages
- sometimes in several languages
- The FAQ
- a catch all starting point. But if there are 2 or more questions about the same theme, the content should go into a dedicated page, leaving only links in the FAQ.
- You can either Special:Search or navigate by Special:Categories.
- Contributors
- Only MediaWiki Markup required, for examples see Wiki_Tips.
Website
The current use is mainly
- announcements and
- (linking) downloads of
- program or
- documentation.
- features shows still GnuCash 2.
- Contributors
-
- Requirements
- PHP+HTML
- Targets
- mostly marketing
Lists
Archives of the Mailing Lists and IRC logs are available, but usually only a short time relevant and harder to search.
Other
- Social Media
- see Website header
- Contributors
- volunteering?
Improve Documentation
Code ------------+
Lists ---> Wiki -+-> Docs
: |
LANG +-> Website
- Coders
- should ideally also update the docs — or at least instead of closing fixed bugs assign them to component Documentation.
- Users
- should add frequently asked questions from the lists to wiki:FAQ.
- Expirienced Users
- should structure the content of FAQ sections into thematic wiki pages. To void redundancy, replace the content in the FAQ by links
- Advanced Users
- should integrate the thematic wiki pages into the official documentation.
- Multilingual Users
- Translate documents
- Code and Website
- offer PO file based translation. It can be easiest improved using WebLate.
- Wiki
- is possible. Improvements of the process needs coordination with User:Warlord.
- Others
- require knowledge of the documenter tools.
