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<chapter id="overview">
  <title>Overview</title>
  
  <para>Welcome to the FreeBSD Documentation Project.  Good quality
    documentation is very important to the success of FreeBSD, and the
    FreeBSD Documentation Project (FDP) is how a lot of that documentation
    is produced.  Your contributions are very valuable.</para>
  
  <para>This document's main purpose is to clearly explain <emphasis>how
    the FDP is organised</emphasis>, <emphasis>how to write and submit
    documentation to the FDP</emphasis>, and <emphasis>how to
    effectively use the tools available to you when writing
    documentation</emphasis>.</para>
  
  <para><indexterm>
      <primary>Membership</primary>
    </indexterm>
    Every one is welcome to join the FDP.  There is no minimum
    membership requirement, no quota of documentation you need to
    produce per month.  All you need to do is subscribe to the
    &a.doc;.</para>

  <para>After you have finished reading this document you should:</para>
  
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem> 
      <para>Know which documentation is maintained by the FDP.</para>
    </listitem>
    
    <listitem>
      <para>Be able to read and understand the SGML source code for the
	documentation maintained by the FDP.</para>
    </listitem>
    
    <listitem> 
      <para>Be able to make changes to the documentation.</para>
    </listitem>
    
    <listitem>
      <para>Be able to submit your changes back for review and eventual
	inclusion in the FreeBSD documentation.</para>
    </listitem> 
  </itemizedlist>

  <sect1>
    <title>The FreeBSD Documentation Set</title>

    <para>The FDP is responsible for four categories of FreeBSD
      documentation.</para>
    
    <variablelist>
      <varlistentry>
        <term>Manual pages</term>

        <listitem>
          <para>The English language system manual pages are not written by
	    the FDP, as they are part of the base system. However, the FDP can
	    (and has) re-worded parts of existing manual pages to make them
	    clearer, or to correct inaccuracies.</para>

          <para>The translation teams are responsible for translating the
	    system manual pages in to different languages.  These translations
	    are kept within the FDP.</para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term>FAQ</term>
	
        <listitem>
          <para>The FAQ aims to address (in short question and answer format)
	    questions that are asked, or should be asked, on the various
	    mailing lists and newsgroups devoted to FreeBSD.  The format does
	    not permit long and comprehensive answers.</para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
        <term>Handbook</term>

        <listitem>
          <para>The Handbook aims to be the comprehensive on-line resource and
	    reference for FreeBSD users.</para>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>
 
      <varlistentry>
         <term>Web site</term>
	
         <listitem>
           <para>This is the main FreeBSD presence on the World Wide Web,
	    visible at <ulink
	      url="../../../../index.html">http://www.FreeBSD.org/</ulink>
	    and many mirrors around the world.  The web site is many people's
	    first exposure to FreeBSD.</para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
    
    <para>These four groups of documentation are all available in the
      FreeBSD CVS tree.  This means that the logs of changes to these
      files are visible to anyone, and anyone can use a program such as
      <application>CVSup</application> or
      <application>CTM</application> to keep local copies of
      this documentation.</para>
    
    <para>In addition, many people have written tutorials or other web
      sites relating to FreeBSD.  Some of these are stored in the CVS
      repository as well (where the author has agreed to this).  In
      other cases the author has decided to keep his documentation
      separate from the main FreeBSD repository.  The FDP endeavours to
      provide links to as much of this documentation as
      possible.</para>
  </sect1>                                                                     
  
  <sect1>                                                                      
    <title>Before you start</title>                                            
    
    <para>This document assumes that you already know:</para>                  
    
    <itemizedlist>                                                             
      <listitem>                                                               
	<para>How to maintain an up-to-date local copy of the FreeBSD
	  documentation by maintaining a local copy of the
	  FreeBSD CVS repository (using <application>CVS</application>
	  and either <application>CVSup</application> or
	  <application>CTM</application>) or by using
	  <application>CVSup</application> to download just a
	  <emphasis>checked-out</emphasis> copy.</para>
      </listitem>
      
      <listitem>                                                               
	<para>How to download and install new software using either the
	  FreeBSD Ports system or &man.pkg.add.1;.</para>
      </listitem>                                                              
    </itemizedlist>                                                            
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Quick Start</title>

    <para>If you just want to get going, and feel confident you can pick
      things up as you go along, follow these instructions.</para>

    <procedure>
      <step>
	<para>Install the <filename role="package">textproc/docproj</filename>
	  meta-port.</para>

	<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cd /usr/ports/textproc/docproj</userinput>
&prompt.root; <userinput>make JADETEX=no install</userinput></screen>
      </step>

      <step>
	<para>Get a local copy of the FreeBSD <filename>doc</filename> tree.
	  Either use CVSup in <literal>checkout</literal> mode to do this, or
	  get a full copy of the CVS repository locally.</para>

	<para>If you have the CVS repository locally then as a minimum you
	  will need to checkout the <filename>doc/share</filename>, and
	  <filename>doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/share</filename>
	  directories.</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>cvs checkout doc/share</userinput>
&prompt.user; <userinput>cvs checkout doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/share</userinput></screen>

	<para>If you have plenty of disk space then you could check out
	  everything.</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>cvs checkout doc</userinput></screen>
      </step>

      <step>
	<para>If you are preparing a change to an existing book or article,
	  check it out of the repository as necessary.  If you are planning on
	  contributing a new book or article then use an existing one as a
	  guide.</para>

	<para>For example, if you want to contribute a new article about
	  setting up a VPN between FreeBSD and Windows 2000 you might do the
	  following.</para>

	<procedure>
	  <step>
	    <para>Check out the <filename>articles</filename>
	      directory.</para>

	    <screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>cvs checkout doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles</userinput></screen>
	  </step>

	  <step>
	    <para>Copy an existing article to use as a template.  In this
	      case, you have decided that your new article belongs in a
	      directory called <filename>vpn-w2k</filename>.</para>

	    <screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>cd doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles</userinput>
&prompt.user; <userinput>cp -r committers-guide vpn-w2k</userinput></screen>
	  </step>
	</procedure>

	<para>If you wanted to edit an existing document, such as the FAQ,
	  which is in <filename>doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq</filename> you
	  would check it out of the repository like this.</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>cvs checkout doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq</userinput></screen>
      </step>

      <step>
	<para>Edit the <filename>.sgml</filename> files using your editor of
	  choice.</para>
      </step>

      <step>
	<para>Test the markup using the <maketarget>lint</maketarget>
	  target.  This will quickly find any errors in the document
	  without actually performing the time-consuming
	  transformation.</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>make lint</userinput></screen>

	<para>When you are ready to actually build the document, you
  	  may specify a single format or a list of formats in the
  	  <varname>FORMATS</varname> variable.  Currently,
  	  <literal>html</literal>, <literal>html-split</literal>,
  	  <literal>txt</literal>, <literal>ps</literal>,
  	  <literal>pdf</literal>, and <literal>rtf</literal> are
  	  supported.  The most up to date list of supported formats is
  	  listed at the top of the
  	  <filename>doc/share/mk/doc.docbook.mk</filename> file.  Make
  	  sure to use quotes around the list of formats when you build
  	  more than one format with a single command.</para>

        <para>For example, to convert the document to
          <literal>html</literal> only, you would use:</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>make FORMATS=html</userinput></screen>

        <para>But when you want to convert the document to both
          <literal>html</literal> and <literal>txt</literal> format,
          you could use either two separate &man.make.1; runs,
          with:</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>make FORMATS=html</userinput>
&prompt.user; <userinput>make FORMATS=txt</userinput></screen>

        <para>or, you can do it in one command:</para>

	<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>make FORMATS="html txt"</userinput></screen>
      </step>

      <step>
	<para>Submit your changes using &man.send-pr.1;.</para>
      </step>
    </procedure>
  </sect1>
</chapter>

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