Hi Steve
The whole process deserves a complete review because it does not fit
with the pace of the development as well as it may not fit 2019 user demand.
The process was rather good for a software release cycle of 12 or more
months and the availability of authors.
I'm thinking to move to a time-based release as with the software.
In summary: At a given deadline, we publish the document/book "as is".
I thought on a monthly or bi-monthy release of the full book(s).
If mistakes or outdated information persist, we fix in the new "release"
as time and availability permits. Release numbering can follow software
numbering.
This is the ideal world, things may not work so smooth in real world...
Plenty of issues to address...
First, we need to get the book(s) at its latest software release.
Then we must be commited to update the text to follow the releases.
Likely, intermediate releases do not carry changes in the software, only
bug fixes.
The update-revision-publish cycle has to go. We keep "update". "Revision
and fixes" shifts to next book release. "Publish" is the latest released
book, of last month.
I imagine the build of the full book to now follow the usage of a
master document, so the build is "automatic", "on-a-click" (*).
The process needs management. No one can manage or coordinate all books,
I suggest one coordinator per book. The community (i.e Authors) may want
to put forward his/her name as coordinator of one of the books.
The "(Book) Guide team" may want to work online directly (i.e no
revision). Updates and new contents is to be written directly in the
chapter stored in the cloud. Trust in Author competences is necessary.
The desktop, NextCloud + LibreOffice online, wiki and websites are the
tools we need to work.
Issues to address...
The fast and continuous update of the books puts a challenge to the
non-English community that wants to translate the books. To be addressed.
The process may frighten newcommers specially people that are not
confident on using LibreOffice. The quality of our publications will
reflect this competences.
We don't have a tool to report mistakes in the books besides mailing
list or direct mail to me. To be adressed.
I stop here for the moment waiting for comments, if we move ahead in
this direction or find another way to get our literature released. Shall
we open a wiki page or cloud document to anotate all ideas?
Kind regards
Olivier
(*) Today Jean Weber kindly assembles the book by concatenating
chapters and adjusting the contents (e.g. removing the TOC of each
chapter, remove pesky direct formatting left, fix many internal
glitches) and this work takes significant time and effort, which we aim
to avoid. Master documents have their own set of issues too, but with
proper tweak in chapters, I think (wishfull thinking !) it can be faster.
