[Typo3-doc] G'day!

[Charlie Dale]

Hi folks,

I thought I'd introduce myself, as I've been lurking for a while. The
discussions have been very interesting, but I haven't felt ready to
contribute as yet, despite having lots of opinions! =)

Anyway, I'm Charlie Dale, from Sydney, Australia. I love writing, and I
particularly love writing technical docs.

The TYPO3 docs have always driven me mad, not because they're terrible, but
because they are both great and horrible at the same time! Kasper always
makes me chuckle, as do many of the other writers. But there are also so
many little things to be improved about the docs to make them actually
understandable (linking between docs, grammar, consistency of TYPO3 versions
depicted, I'm sure you know all this!). There is so much potential for the
docs.

I'm heavily on the side of: let's not spend too much time trying to redo all
the documentation infrastructure - we have something that at least works,
let's make it usable _as is_ rather than spending our time answering the
wrong problem. For this reason I think moving to DocBook should be at least
put off for a while, until we nail the basic project docs in OO Writer. But
at the same time, I do think DocBook is cool.

I can think of some really simple steps that will help us get from
inaccessible documentation to really awesome documentation in a few short
weeks:

1. Write the "Start here" page. How hard can it be??
2. Nominate a basic set of docs (e.g. Getting Started, Modern Template
Building, ...) and give them a basic review for grammar and completeness.
3. Remove every single Annotation to the docs on typo3.org that say "grammar
mistake on line X" or whatever. Fix the mistakes and remove the annotations.
These are really annoying for first timers to TYPO3.
4. Move the glossary from the Wiki to the typo3.org > Documentation >
Glossary page.

OK, so these would be only baby steps in the right direction: so much more
would be required to have world-class (and world-readable!) docs. But I
think that these would be great first steps, rather than trying to redo the
whole docs framework et al.

Now I'm not saying these things to tell others that they should do them. I'm
explaining what I would like to do. I'm going to work on this unless someone
tells me it's a bad idea. I'm also happy to jump on board with a team
decision (if the team direction and membership gets worked out), but for the
moment I'd love to just take these baby steps.

So my question is: how can I go about doing these things? Do I just write a
Start Here page, send it for review by the list, and send it to you, Robert,
for upload? Re: fixing up some of the basic docs, I know there's a system on
typo3.org that lets you submit changes to the document author, who can then
review the changes and approve/deny them. How can I get access to this
component of the site?

Hope this isn't too much in one go.

Kind regards,
Charlie