KDE Developer Documentation Update: Far from the Endgame

This wonderful depiction of Konqi was made by Tyson Tan for the KDE community.

It has been nearly three months since I embarked on an adventure in the land known as dev docs. And while the set period for that work is coming to a close, the truth is that the journey has really only just begun. Just like the pioneers of old, the first important step is to get to survey the land and map it for future adventurers.

The KDE community’s developer documentation isn’t exactly new territory but, through the years, it has grown from a garden to a huge forest with only a brave few doing the work to keep things from getting out of hand. They could use a helping hand.

The KDE community is putting out a call for heroes to assemble and help put order to our developer (and eventually also user) documentation. We need all kinds of heroes, from technical/documentation writers to new developers to veteran members. We need all kinds of eyes, fresh eyes, seasoned eyes, outsider eyes, community eyes, to have a better grasp of what developers need and want from our documentation.

There’s quite a list of tasks to be done, but here’s a few that can be accomplished by people with different skills and familiarity with KDE:

• Proofreading the Apidocs: The API docs are our professional, public-facing documentation for KDE Frameworks and other libraries. Making them look professional can be as simple as checking them for typos and grammatical errors. Bonus quest: Make sure the Apidocs also comply with the KDE Library Documentation Policy.
• Tutorials: KDE has a plethora of tutorials, both for external developers on TechBase and contributors on the Community Wiki. Simply checking if the tutorials still work is a sure way of checking whether they need updating in the first place.
• Projects and Teams Info: KDE is home to many software projects and teams, some of which have moved on or disappeared. Marking which ones are the latter and updating the information for those that are still active can lessen the friction for newcomers trying to figure out where to start or who to contact.

Most of these can be done on the KDE Wikis. All you need is a single KDE Identity account, which is also a great way to get started contributing to the community. KDE is a great community that creates great software. It’s about time we also get known for having great documentation as well and for that we’ll need everyone’s help.