Hmm, we need more communication within the community to reduce misunderstanding. I'll leave @LordOfBikes to respond to some of these.
dxli wrote
I am not clear on the current status of our documentation.
GnuCash development is a team effort. The developers support each other, review changes, and share what they know. That teamwork makes a huge difference, if someone leaves or takes a break, others can step in and keep things moving smoothly.
The documentation, by contrast, took a very different route. It was almost entirely a solo effort by one very dedicated contributor who did an excellent job, but there wasn’t a team built around it for ongoing updates. So when they stepped back, there was no established group to continue maintaining and updating the documentation.
dxli wrote
To include docs within the source code would introduce too many code commits;
I disagree. The LibreCAD documentation (
Manual Content) shows how this can work effectively. It follows the
Diátaxis framework, separating material into tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference, and explanations. Only the technical reference really needs to stay tightly in sync with code updates.
The current documentation is largely made up of tables with explanatory text (for example,
toolbars.rst). Conveniently, all the detailed information for the technical reference already exists within the code itself.
I suggest:
* Change the manual format from reStructuredText to Markdown for better GitHub compatibility and easier editing.
* Tweak the structure so tables can be updated separately from explanatory text.
* Add a process in the code to automatically generate the tables.
* Occasionally update the explanatory text as needed.
I could take on the reference docs, with support from the development team and help managing version control through Read the Docs. There’s a lot of good material already in the GitHub repo that would fit well into the other parts of the manual.
Locked
