LDP Author Guide

Jorge Godoy

Conectiva S.A.
Publishing Department

<godoy@metalab.unc.edu>

Emma Jane Hogbin

<emmajane@xtrinsic.com>

Mark F. Komarinski

<mkomarinski@wayga.org>

David C. Merrill

david -AT- lupercalia.net

2005-03-04

Revision History
Revision 4.8	2006-04-20	Revised by: MG
Added notes about prefered submission formats, corrected links, packaged templates.

This guide describes the process of submitting and publishing a document with The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP). It includes information about the tools, toolchains and formats used by TLDP. The document's primary audience is new TLDP authors, but it also contains information for seasoned documentation authors.

Table of Contents

1. About this Guide

1.1. About this Guide
1.2. About The LDP
1.3. Feedback
1.4. Copyrights and Trademarks
1.5. Acknowledgments and Thanks
1.6. Document Conventions

2. Authoring TLDP Documents: An Introduction

2.1. Summary of The LDP Process
2.2. Mailing Lists

3. Writing Your Proposal

3.1. Choosing a Subject
3.2. Scope of Your Document
3.3. Unmaintained and Out-of-date Documents
3.4. Developing an Outline
3.5. Research

4.1. Writing the Text
4.2. Edit and Proofread the Text
4.3. Tools for Writing, Editing and Maintaining your Document

5.1. Markup: A General Overview
5.2. DocBook: What it is and why we use it
5.3. XML and SGML: Why we use XML
5.4. Markup Languages Accepted by TLDP

6. Distributing Your Documentation

6.1. Before Distributing Your Documentation
6.2. Licensing and Copyright
6.3. Acknowledgments
6.4. TLDP Review Process
6.5. Submission to LDP for publication

7. Maintenance

7.1. Maintaining Your Document
7.2. Fixing Errors

A. Templates

A.1. Document Templates
A.2. Style Sheets
A.3. GNU Free Documentation License

B. System Setup: Editors, Validation and Transformations

B.1. Tools for your operating system
B.2. Editing tools
B.3. Validation
B.4. Transformations
B.5. DocBook DTD
B.6. Formatting Documents

C. Concurrent Version System (CVS)

C.1. Getting a CVS account
C.2. Using CVS
C.3. CVS Resources

D. DocBook: Sample Markup

D.1. General Tips and Tricks
D.2. <section> and <sectN>: what's the difference?
D.3. Command Prompts
D.4. Encoding Indexes
D.5. Inserting Pictures
D.6. Markup for Metadata
D.7. Bibliographies
D.8. Entities (shortcuts, text macros and re-usable text)
D.9. Customizing your HTML files

E. Converting Documents to DocBook XML

E.1. Text to DocBook
E.2. OpenOffice.org to DocBook
E.3. Microsoft Word to DocBook
E.4. LaTeX to DocBook
E.5. LyX to DocBook
E.6. DocBook to DocBook Transformations

F. GNU Free Documentation License

F.1. 0. PREAMBLE
F.2. 1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
F.3. 2. VERBATIM COPYING
F.4. 3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
F.5. 4. MODIFICATIONS
F.6. 5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
F.7. 6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
F.8. 7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
F.9. 8. TRANSLATION
F.10. 9. TERMINATION
F.11. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
F.12. Addendum

List of Tables
D-1. Useful markup

List of Figures
B-1. epcEdit screen shot
B-2. nedit screen shot
B-3. Adding shell commands to nedit
B-4. nsgmls output on success

		Next
		About this Guide