[maemo-developers] [announce] Solution to create Maemo help/documentation files

[From: Andrew Sichevoi]

Hello,


   Maemo is ~4 years old. And there is no good tool to create help files
(for OSSO Help Framework, "ossohelpsource")
   for Maemo  applications has been created since 2005. Some might agree
with me, some mightn't,
   but it is not a micro problem. It makes an obvious obstacle for people
with non-technical background to contribute to Maemo:
   there are no easy ways to write help documentation for applications
(which are shown in Maemo via Help Manager/application).

   I've found (more detailed is here:
http://blog.thekondor.net/2009/04/why-help-writing-for-maemo-applications.html)
at least
   three major problems with help documents authoring for Maemo
applications:

      1. Awful OSSO Help format description
      2. No abilities to validate/check written help (no schema files, like
DTD or XML Schema)
      3. No good user-friendly and simple tool available for people with no
experience with XML.

   So I spend some time to improve this situation and developed a kind of
solution which I'm pleased to announce.

   Since Syntext Serna WYSWYG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntext_Serna)
xml editor is free as beer, I wrote a plugin for Serna
   to add support of OSSO Help format. This plugin delivers abilities to
create and edit Maemo help files (usually located in /usr/share/osso-help)
in WYSIWYG mode. I hope this allow members of Maemo communtiy to write good
help documentation
  for theirs favorite applications in easy way.

   Plugin's homepage is http://thekondor.net/osso-help-plugin -- there you
can find some documentation, screenshots and plugin itself.
   Serna Free edition for most common platforms can be downloaded here:
http://syntext.com/downloads/serna/


   Your suggestions, ideas and bug-reports are welcome.



Regards,
-- 
  Andrew Sichevoi
  http://thekondor.net
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