Writing
Effective Self­Help Guides
for World Domination
www.hicktech.com
@emmajanedotnet

Abstract
Developers write documentation. Technical authors write manuals. But in a perfect world, your users read software self­help guides.
Consumers expect documentation to reflect the sophistication of the software they are using, and will abandon an application if they cannot
easily find the answer to their problems. If we really want world domination of free and open source software, we need to have the self­help
guides worthy of our code. In "Self Help Guides for World Domination" we'll take a look at the strategies and tools needed for really awesome
documentation.
Imagine a world where documentation actually helped you to find an answer, or solved one of your problems. If that sounds like a pipe
dream, it's because you've had to struggle with too much crap documentation. Technical writing can be fun and accessible, but more
importantly, it can be truly useful. By analysing how people use software, and where they stumble, we can drastically improve the experience
our users have with our software documentation. Creating relevant documentation needs a little more than just a scraping of code comments
though­­and this talk will show you how it should be done.
Open source tools for writing documentation are very sophisticated, but generally our mastery of them quite simply sucks. Whether they are
using DocBook, Mallard or DITA, many projects have opted for very powerful markup languages for their documentation, but often use only a
fraction of what the tools can do. Other projects have opted to go with Web­based content management systems and have failed to create a
cohesive self­help experience for users. You will learn how to effectively use these common tools for creating and maintaining collaborative
documentation. Real examples will be pulled from open source projects.
If you've been wanting to help make the user experience better for your project, this talk is a must­see.

I talk about the popular
stuff: Version Control,
Documentation

Writing Open Source
●
WOSCON 2009: the first­ever open source
documentation conference
●
!wosdocs
●
#woscon

Documentation
doesn't have to be ugly

AND

We can make
docs hurt less.

This talk:
●
Types of documentation
●
Intended audience
●
Framework
●
Case study: StatusNet

Identi.ca t­shirt slide
http://www.redbubble.com/people/karlcow/t­shirts/3128519­1­im­identica­and­im­open

lizzie_anne http://www.flickr.com/photos/24498687@N03/2337550017/

Types of
“Documentation”
● Dictionaries (function references)
● Release notes
● UI text
● Case studies
● Point of need cheat sheets
● Inline help
● Self­help guides
● Marketing and promotional text
● Cookbooks and HOWTOs

Types of “Readers”
●
Developers: people who are writing new
code; you six months from now
●
Existing users: administrators, end users
●
Marketing prospects

bobtravis http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobtravis/4005339850/

Cindy47452 http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindy47452/1500174297/

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

About the project
●
out of date
●
Incomplete
●
hard to maintain
●
painful
Daniel Morris http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielmorris/147735447/

Wanted Documentation
● Code base and functions
● Community Wiki ­ http://status.net/wiki/Main_Page
● API documentation (a combination of functions yields an
XML output that can be used e.g. public timeline)
● Developer Manual
● Administrator Manual
● User Manual
● Online help
● Plugins
● I18N

Pink sherbert photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3372060864/

Challenges
● Tie documentation to pain and pleasure. Make it easy to write
documentation by tying it in places where work is already
happening.
● Make documentation useful and therefore more rewarding for
the documentation contributors.
● Write only useful, task­focused documentation.
● Single source the "canonical" source of information.
● Automate where possible.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlabar/2832969149/ Martin LaBar

The plan
● Centralized documentation in a machine­readable format (XML).
● Well documented code that is scraped and pushed to the Web.
● Translation of documentation at the machine­readable stage.
● Push documentation to community­editable space.
● Review and revise role that is responsible for pulling edits back into
the trunk and recommending UI fixes at “pain” points.
● Write only useful documentation to accomplish specific tasks.

Who does this magic?
●
Developers document code →
●
Feature list in release notes →
●
Point of need: task list ("how do I..."). FAT,
not FAQ
●
Community adds to the wiki which is pulled
back into the code (fix UI where
community edits show flaws in the code­
base)

Rollout
●
The framework is used to describe the
structure for the whole documentation
system.
●
Product owner defines the standards for
documentation. (Wasn't Evan clever to hire a
crazy monkey that loves docs and version
control and community and pirates?)
●
The rollout involves: Capture → Organize →
Output

http://www.flickr.com/photos/starscream_e/220892520/ chris starscream

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Capture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/therichbrooks/2600080329/ therichbrooks

Capture
●
Brainstorm a list of all possible things that
people will want to do. Interview
developers and community.
●
Sort the task list by roles and prerequisite
knowledge.
●
Establish a culture of documenting code.

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Organize
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousexpeditions/3394943117/

Organize
● Put information into a single source system. Use a
machine readable language (XML of some flavour:
DocBook, DITA, Mallard).
● Establish and apply relevant tags based on
audience output.
● Always think about automation, efficiency and
reuse. Never write something twice.
● At this stage translate your text and pull it back into
the organization system (more about this...)

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Translate
http://www.flickr.com/photos/opacity/284124471/

Translate
●
Push to translators while text is at the XML
level.
●
Bring back the translated text for output
processing.
●
TranslateWiki
●
See also: GNOME/Ubuntu projects

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Output

Output
●
Push content to...
●
PDF
●
HTML
●
Community wiki
●
Etc

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Review
Wasabi Noise http://www.flickr.com/photos/djkubik/192688574/

Review
●
Have a feedback mechanism in place
(comments, editable docs, rate+review)
●
Review changes for UI improvements that are
needed, changes and additions that can be
rolled (as a patch) back into the source.
● Although there are tools to import back into API
docs (https://code.launchpad.net/~pauli­
virtanen/scipy/pydocweb), hand rolling is
probably better because you can look for things
that should be fixed in docs, but in the UI.

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

Revise
Pirate Joey http://www.flickr.com/photos/pirateyjoe/3501692359/

Revise
●
Collate feedback for each language and
each vendor branch.
●
Return changes to the source with notes on
the changes from the previous version.
●
Translate and Publish the revised docs.
●
Improve the UI where relevant.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/starscream_e/220892520/ chris starscream

Framework Capture
Revise
Organize
Review
Translate
Output

OMFG!
That was awesome!
Sign. Me. Up!
Writing Open Source 2010
www.writingopensource.com
StatusNet ­ emma@status.net
@emmajanedotnet
CC BY­SA­NC