[Typo3] Survey on TYPO3 in the United States

Alex Heizer alex at tekdevelopment.com
Mon Oct 24 23:40:45 CEST 2005


Joseph Mesterhazy wrote:

>I think the idea of a US focused Typo3 site is great, but please,  
>please do not start re-implementing the already existing  
>documentation sources. Typo3 is one of the few open source projects  
>that almost has *too* much documentation, and this would not help.  
>  
>
TYPO3 is one of the few OS projects that has too much documentation in 
badly-translated English. If T3 is ever to become acceptable in the US, 
one of the biggest complaints about the documentation will need to be 
corrected. This means reviewing and correcting a lot of documents. 
Hopefully, these will become the English versions and we won't be adding 
to the documentation, merely replacing a lot of it. This has already 
started happening with the extension manuals, so we hope to be able to 
continue to make a difference there. :)

>There is already a wiki at wiki.typo3.org, if you like you could make  
>a US section on that. 
>
Wikis are good for some things, but not for the amount of documentation 
T3 has. For example, there is a way to pull the OpenOffice documents we 
currently have into typo3.org in the correct format to appear on the 
web, then T3 can automatically create a PDF from it. You lose all of 
this functionality when the documentation is in a wiki. Also, with this 
process of "upload a file and have it automatically appear on the 
website", menus, intercontextual links and file download links are 
automatically created. Wiki navigation is limited, and in most cases 
needs to be done manually for each item. With the amount of 
documentation that is already available, plus the new documentation  
that is planned, using a wiki to maintain it rather than the current 
system provides extra limitations and would require more effort.

>If anything the documentation needs a thorough  
>consolidation and pruning of chapters and documents that are no  
>longer relevant to modern typo3 sites.
>  
>
The US documentation team is doing this, beginning with the extension 
manuals, and will move on to all the documentation. We will also be 
helping out with a "Learning TYPO3" package that will consolidate the 
"GoLive", "MTB1&2", "FTB", "Getting Started", "TypoScript By Example" 
manuals, and others into a single set of documentation that will lead a 
new website developer through learning T3 using relevant examples and 
processes.

>I'm not saying the US Typo3 site should not have any documentation at  
>all, for example, we definately need a pre-configured Typo3 package  
>with US date, time, and monetary formats set as default, including  
>tt_news, and that would need documentation to go with it, which would  
>be perfectly suitable for a US Typo3 site.
>
Hopefully, the US T3 site won't have very much actual documentation on 
it at all. We hope to have our English versions be the default English 
versions, and reside where the English versions currently do on 
typo3.org. There have been discussions on the typo3 US mailing list, so 
if anyone is interested in what's going on with the document review 
project or the Learning TYPO3 project, feel free to check out that 
mailing list and join in as much as you can -- all are welcome. :)

Cheers!
Alex




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