[Scummvm-devel] Brainstorming about ScummVM Manual

[Henry Bush]

Hello all,

Yes it's me again, going on about the manual ;-)

Preamble: At the moment, the manual contains (almost) nothing about
specific games, and not so much about specific ports (pretty much just
installation instructions). I went to fill in the installation
instructions for one of the small device ports (NDS, iirc), and found
that the page which describes the installation process has a huge
amount of information relating to that port on it, not just
installation stuff. A quick glance at the readme also show that there
is a short section for pretty much every game, containing such info as
what additional datafiles might be needed (kyra.dat, etc), games that
have CD audio and how to copy it, known issues, etc.

So my question is this: should the ScummVM manual contain absolutely
EVERYTHING about ScummVM? By that I mean should it incorporate
documents such as (for example):

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/SymbianOS_FAQ
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=936 (SirDave's WinCE manual)
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=3334 (GloKidd's PalmOS manual)
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Compiling_ScummVM (+ individual
compilation instructions for each port)

Hopefully you see my point: if this document is going to be the
complete guide, it is going to be enormous. Truly behemothian. Many
times bigger than the current one. Not necessarily a problem, but it
must be easy to navigate for the casual user, and thus probably
reorganized from its current state. On the other hand, if the manual
should *not* contain everything about ScummVM, if some things are
better left to porters' web pages or the wiki, then we really need to
decide (and have written down) what it should contain and what it
shouldn't.

This also affects the way the porters update the users: if the manual
is the ultimate guide for the users, will porters be happy updating
that, rather than their own web pages? Assuming that (a) it's all done
in svn, and (b) all the different types (pdf, html, etc) are easily
generated (i.e. automatically), it shouldn't be too much hassle to
make the switch, so long as people are happy to do it.

I seem to have taken the manual under my wing. I hope I'm not treading
on any toes; shout if I have. I didn't notice any toes to tread on, so
I don't think I have :-)

Ciao,


Henry