Pleco DocuWiki

mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
stephanhodges has set up a DocuWiki for Pleco 2 beta documentation on his server at:

http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/pleco/

For copyright reasons we probably can't put any user content added here in the official user manual, but if this format proves a popular way to exchange tips / enhancements / etc we'd certainly try to carry over something similar to the finished 2.0 website. At the very least it's a more nicely-formatted way to read the flashcard / preferences instructions :)
 
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stephanhodges

状元
Not sure I understand the copyright concerns. We should just add a copyright notice (which I should have done anyways).

It's not a "public domain" wiki, but only "approved" registered users. At least, I didn't intend for it to be licensed that way, since I basically just copied your postings and started formatting.

We want people to "fix" the pages so that they are accurate. Also, add new sections on "study methodologies", "study / usage tips", etc.

I also would like someone to add screen shots, if possible, preferably the Windows version.

I'm sure others would have better ideas than I on how to improve it.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Oh, for the website it's fine, I was just talking about the PDF / "official" instruction manual - thanks to the number of different legal jurisdictions where Pleco is distributed, working out the legal issues with incorporating other people's content into that would take more effort than producing that same content ourselves - we'd have to draw up a dozen different versions of a copyright license agreement and require all site users to agree to the appropriate one for their particular country. As long as it stays web-only that's not as big an issue since it's not going on a fixed medium like a CD / booklet and if any legal issues come up with anyone's contributions we can simply delete them.

So I was thinking this would be more of a place for unofficial tips / ideas / suggestions / etc than a standard reference manual - that's really the area users can contribute more to anyway, we can explain what each button does but we can't think of all of the possible ways to use them.
 
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stephanhodges

状元
OK

However, I was thinking that this would actually be the precursor to the official PDF document, since it is in beta right now, and people are already operating under that agreement.

If desired, it's also possible to "lock down" sections or pages to selected users (employees or representatives of the company, for example). This could allow putting the official manual up, and allow discussion pages, extras, etc. by the community at large.

When it's transfered to your site / wiki, then might be a good time to let it grow as a more "public" living document.

To be clear, I have no personal stake in which way it develops or how you ultimately use the content, but I was hoping we could make a "better" user manual this way, and also perhaps save you a little time :)
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That was more the model I was thinking of, an official non-editable manual for the reference part and editable tips / discussion sections along with that. While I'd love to take advantage of sfrrr et al's willingness to work on copy-editing / improving the main manual too, I'm really worried about the potential legal issues with that - pretty much every license agreement we've ever signed includes a standard clause warranting that our product doesn't violate anyone else's IP and offering the other party the ability to terminate the agreement if it turns out that it does, so even if it's unlikely we'd end up with a user suing us for incorporating their willingly-contributed content into our instruction manual, the consequences if they did are too disastrous to let us take the chance.
 
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stephanhodges

状元
Well, sfrrr is a lawyer, although perhaps just for the USA, :)

Only registered people can currently make changes. I can change the wiki to only be visible to registered people too. It's currently visible BEFORE registering because many people aren't familiar with wikis (in my experience), although the beta testers might not fall in that category!

Making the wiki (for now) visible only to registered users would mean that it was only available to beta testers for now also. Perhaps that would be enough to make the content authorship clear?
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
As long as contributions are logged with the name of the contributor, that should be all we need to keep the authorship clear enough that we can transfer it over to the finished-version website at least. But we still do need to maintain that wall between the official Pleco-developed manual and the user-contributed parts, bridging the gap between the print and electronic publishing worlds puts us in an awkward legal position in a lot of areas unfortunately.
 
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stephanhodges

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Are you saying to keep a clear "notice" of user contributed pages, or would a (say) spelling correction or grammar correction within the existing two sections by a registered user also be considered a user contribution?

Everything is logged by user, with a revision history.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Even corrections would have to be considered contributions, I think, so those existing sections should probably be locked. And I've already registered a mikelove account on there, or at least I think I did.

(sorry for everyone else reading this, we probably should have had this discussion by e-mail beforehand - my fault for posting so quickly)
 
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stephanhodges

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I considered email, but I'm glad you did post it here. It helps if people understand some of the constraints.

I'll try and consolidate the discussion (or just add it as a discussion) if you want to the editing guidelines.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Sure, happy to have something there to suggest what we're looking for with this. Thanks again for setting it up, and sorry for all of the uncertainty - lot of things to keep track of at the moment :)
 
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sfrrr

状元
Mike--only because I copy-edit as I read am I offering up the help/edits. I will happily sign away all of my rights to the Pleco manual if you like, although the memo would have to be precisely written so that I'm not signing anyway anything else.

OR, I could fax you my markups and you could enter them into the wiki.

Disclaimer: Whatever edits I come up with are the result of only ONE reading. For proofreading, any document should have two, three, or four sets of eyes, each reading the copy at least twice. And that's way too much trouble for free.

And, Stephan with an ee, I'll gladly put up WM5/6 screenshots. Just tell me the sort of things I should capture.

Sandra
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
There's going to be a lot more work needed on those than copy-editing, honestly, so it's not really worth going to the trouble - I posted those drafts so people would have some kind of explanation, but they were whipped together in a few hours and are going to be heavily rewritten in the finished manual.

Screenshots you might want to wait for at least the next beta, since there've been a few more buttons moved / checkboxes added.
 
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johnh113

榜眼
Mike wrote, "Screenshots you might want to wait for at least the next beta, since there've been a few more buttons moved / checkboxes added."

Dear Mike,

Any guess as to when that next beta might be coming?!

John
 
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daniu

榜眼
johnh113 said:
Any guess as to when that next beta might be coming?!
Click to expand...

Don't ask questions like that.

Can't find it any more but there was a post by Mike how he wants to continue after that. I remember something like much shorter time between the betas ...

best regards
Daniel
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yes, it was supposed to be once a week but we got slowed down somewhat by the Palm Database Corruption Disaster - not going to talk dates, but basically the goal for B6 now is to get the last couple of tweaks / missing features / etc added and fix as many bugs as we can.
 
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stephanhodges

状元
I've posted a summary of this "copyright" discussion onto the wiki at http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/pleco/pleco2:copyrightdiscussion.

The basic message I would like people to understand is that it IS OK to edit and add to the wiki, because Mike will be generating his user manual independently of the information on the wiki.

Please consider adding your tips and insights there. The difference to this forum is that the wiki is a living document, not a threaded discussion.

Stephan
 
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stephanhodges

状元
Mike wrote, "Screenshots you might want to wait for at least the next beta, since there've been a few more buttons moved / checkboxes added."
Click to expand...

I would prefer someone to either send or post themselves at least 2 oe 3 screen shots. We can do them over (this isn't a printed manual!). Of course, I'm not asking someone to "waste" a lot of time, but I don't feel it's a waste to post a few screens now, since it will allow us to start formatting the document better, and it will help people see where screen shots would help the most, etc.
 
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