Documentation

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Martello
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Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:12 am

Documentation

Post by Martello »

Hello,

today I tried to start with FreeCAD using the tutorial https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Creating_a_ ... tDesign/de. I found that thre are some errors in the german translation of the tutorial and big parts are marked as outdated.

I learned, that it is not so easy to contribute to the FreeCAD project by improving the documentation, because you can not easily get an account to make changes.
At first I registered for the reporting a bug. But this account was not valid for the FreeCAD forum. With the next registration it is now possible to write this post. As I understand writing this post is the first step. After approval of the post by an admin I am allowed to send a private message to an admin to get an account to change the documentation.

Is it possible that that difficult way is not helpful to motivate people to contribute to FreeCAD?

On https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Manual:Introduction you say that a PDF manual is available on Gitbook. After following this link I am invited to sign up at Gitbook. But also then I can't get access. Is the link still valid? If not, please remove it.
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Kunda1
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Re: Documentation

Post by Kunda1 »

yorik wrote: pinged by pinger macro
@yorik what's the status of gitbook, btw?
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jmaustpc
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Re: Documentation

Post by jmaustpc »

Martello wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:59 am Is it possible that that difficult way is not helpful to motivate people to contribute to FreeCAD?
No not at all, some would argue that it should be more difficult not easier, because they think we should make sure you know anything about FreeCAD before we let you alter the wiki, which needs to be accurate. All you have to do is create a forum account here first, discuss possible bugs here first before creating a bug tracker ticket and hang around the forum. If you want wiki access all you have to do is first be a forum member and then ask for a wiki account.

You seem to have no idea of the magnitude of spam problems on the Internet. If we did what you have suggested, the wiki would be full of spam.

Some years ago we had to stop anonymous posting to the forum to control spam. That is the only reason that we force you to create an account in the first place and then it is hidden until we approve your first post. We delete thousands of spam accounts every year and it wastes a lot of our time. Spammers are a menace.

All we do with the wiki now, is try to ensure you are not a spammer.

If you would like to help translate German that would be great, so I have created your wiki account. The wiki is written in English and then translated into the other languages in an attempt to keep it consistent. This is how the translation system works. Years ago before we had the translation system, we just wrote the translations manually as independent pages. Please note that FreeCAD development is fast so often the wiki will be out of date, not exactly wrong just was right once but things may have moved on since the page was written.
Martello wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:59 am On https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Manual:Introduction you say that a PDF manual is available on Gitbook. After following this link I am invited to sign up at Gitbook. But also then I can't get access. Is the link still valid? If not, please remove it.
I don't know which link you are referring to, the ones I tried seemed to still be correct. Exactly which URL are you talking about?

Tutorials are by their nature very likely to be out of date. I suggest that the wiki documentation is the highest priority, but this is open source so you can contribute in any way that you want. It is just my suggestion.
chrisb
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Re: Documentation

Post by chrisb »

I may add, that the translations should not try to be better than their English source. So if you find a mistake, please take the time to correct it in the English version and then translate it as usual. If you want it to be spell and grammar checked, post to the wiki forum with a link to your improvement.
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Martello
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Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:12 am

Re: Documentation

Post by Martello »

I can not get access to an HTML or PDF document in this Gitbook-Link:
Easier to read HTML, PDF, MOBI and EPUB versions are available on https://www.gitbook.com/book/yorikvanha ... al/details
ajawamnet
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Joined: Sun Jul 28, 2019 12:42 am

Re: Documentation

Post by ajawamnet »

Martello wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 4:10 pm I can not get access to an HTML or PDF document in this Gitbook-Link:
Easier to read HTML, PDF, MOBI and EPUB versions are available on https://www.gitbook.com/book/yorikvanha ... al/details
I can't either - it does a redirect. Where can you get an off-line manual? We have users behind OWT's and firewalls that need reference material.
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M4x
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Re: Documentation

Post by M4x »

You can find "printable version" in the left toolbar of the wiki. Can't test it right now, since I'm on my mobile.
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