A short time ago, those of us who had been actively discussing the manual on the inkscape-docs list agreed that FLOSS Manuals (http://flossmanuals.net http://flossmanuals.net/) was our best option for keeping an official manual up-to-date while encouraging non-technical users to contribute. It has a simple interface, is readily available (it is a web application), and there exist translation tools which are being actively developed to provide a usable translation interface. There are many other benefits to using FLOSS Manuals (FM) as well: we would have the ability to organize different setups of manuals / how-tos by arranging existing content into new “manuals”; to generate manuals in different distributable formats (export as pdf, html, and even print online with lulu.com, et cetera). These powerful capabilities create an exciting possibility to build and maintain a dynamic manual with minimal effort.
Recently, FM has received a small grant from Google to host a “book sprint”. Adam Hyde of FM has personally invited some of the members from the inkscape-docs list to join him for the book sprint in order to flesh out a basic, up-to-date manual using the FM tools. (If you have not seen how this works yet, you can go to the website and check it out. Since our manual has only some test material in it, you cannot yet view it as a manual, but if you set up user account, you can view it in the edit mode.)
While FM has certain guidelines which the book sprint must follow and goals to accomplish, we will be discussing on inkscape-docs the particulars which we want the book sprint to produce in order to make it most productive for both FM and Inkscape. Adam will be active in this discussion, and help guide it so that it proceeds toward both FLOSS Manual goals and Inkscape Docs goals. Anyone who would like to participate in this discussion is welcome and encouraged to do so.
Also, anyone is welcome and encouraged to take part in the actual book sprint itself, which will be taking place from July 5^th through the 12^th in Paris. Participants are welcome either in person, if you are able, or else by internet. (Details will follow on inkscape-docs as they are worked out.)
The committed participants thus far are:
Adam Hyde (from FLOSS Manuals) Brianna Laugher from Wikimedia (http://brianna.modernthings.org http://brianna.modernthings.org/) Cédric Gemy (pygmee) Elisa de Castro Guerra (yemanja) Alexandre Prokoudine and I (Joshua Facemyer)
We are all looking forward to spending some time getting to know each other better, seeing Paris (those of us who don't live there ;) and, most importantly, putting together an Inkscape Manual for the betterment of the Inkscape community!