[linux-audio-user] some thoughts about Linux audio software documentation

[Florian Schmidt]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:13:02 -0400
Dave Phillips <dlphilp at bright.net> wrote:

> Linux Sound HOWTO   July 2001
> ALSA Sound mini-HOWTO    November 1999
> Linux MIDI HOWTO    May 2002
> Linux MP3 HOWTO   December 2001
> 
>   Worse, the LDP's own documentation refers back to these out-of-date 
> pieces, making sure that readers continue to be misinformed. I mean no
> 
> critique of the excellent LPD, but it seems to me that as a community
> we have an obligation to correct this situation. For all the talk
> about improving documentation, here's a chance for anyone to get
> directly involved. The format for these HOWTOs is simple and already
> laid out: what's needed is currency, someone to correct and update the
> basic sound & music oriented HOWTOs. Otherwise it might be better if
> we asked the LDP to remove the docs in order to mitigate confusion.

I'm a big fan of wikis. They make it so easy for the user to contribute
documentation. Have a look at alsa.opensrc.org. It surpasses the
official alsa site in many places wrt the available
information/documentation. And if it didn't it were a great addition
anyways.

So while i'm not saying that every open source project should use a wiki
for their primary documentation site, they should definetly think about
using a wiki as secondary more uptodate user contributed documentation
source.. 

With some effort the rather wild and often unstructured collection of
information that a wiki is can be refactored and flow back into the main
doc.

My suggestion would be: Transfer the above listed HOWTO's into wiki's
and see what happens :)

Flo


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