1 <p>

     2 The best way to get involved with the manual is to choose a piece that

     3 is not done. Claim it to make sure no one else is duplicating the

     4 effort by sending a note to the mailing list. When you have a

     5 completed file, or a patch to an existing file, send it to the list so

     6 that Alex or someone else can check it in for you.

     7 

     8 <p>

     9 Here's a todo list of things you could choose to do. It is in order

    10 from easy and immediate to harder and longer term:

    11 <ul>

    12 <li> Add a list of subsections to the table of contents for

    13 at least Configuration.

    14 <li> Update manual.css to make things more readable, and to make

    15 the HTML easier to write. Most pressing need is <pre> tag

    16 improvements. 

    17 <li> write more tutorials. One that shows how to make a link between two

    18 dtnd's is the next required one. After that, a debugging one would be

    19 good. Also we need one showing a different storage backend.

    20 <li> write the arch.html page, which will draw heavily on Mike's (and

    21 other people's) paper.

    22 <li> document one of the commands for the main reference page. You

    23 usually need to read the source to know exactly how things work. This

    24 is critical, because some things do not work like you expect

    25 from their names... typically this a bug, and you can ask someone to

    26 fix it, or document it as-is, if it will take several releases to get a

    27 complete fix done.

    28 <li> Write more manpages. As of now, only two are done. (When you do

    29 dtnd.8, beware that you'll need to edit the Makefiles a bit, since

    30 they currently assume all manpages are in section 1.)

    31 <li> Choose the best tool to turn man pages into HTML and arrange

    32 for it to run when you run make.

    33 <li> choose a documentation markup system (like docbook) and setup a

    34 system to generate .html, .pdf, etc from it. Convert everything that's

    35 done so far into the new system and write a document for manual

    36 writers who come behind you explaining what you did. This is not a

    37 required project, but it might be nice to do. The sooner we do it, the

    38 less work the conversion step will be. But it could never happen and

    39 no harm would come from it.

    40 </ul>

    41 

    42 <p>

    43 Another far-out wishlist item is to make anonymous comments on the

    44 bottom of the online version of the manual possible. The effect of the

    45 comments on the bottom of the mySQL online manual is to make it

    46 much much better, both by letting readers point out gotchas they

    47 suffered, and by letting different voices be heard. Getting this

    48 done will involve getting buy-in from Melissa (webmistress

    49 extraordinare). The system should also run in a mode where a

    50 maintainer can nuke comments that are no longer needed when their

    51 content has been rolled into the manual.

    52 

    53 <p>

    54 Find a place to document useful TCL debugging tricks. For example:

    55 

    56 <pre>proc bl {} { puts [ bundle list ]; after 5000 bl }</pre>