[Ardour-Dev] [Ardour FLOSS Manual] first inquiry

Wed Nov 4 03:33:33 PST 2009

[CC: Walter Langelaar (moddr_lab), Adam Hyde (FLOSS Manuals), please use 
"reply-all", thx!]

Dear Ardour devs,

I've been invited by the moddr_lab and WORM in Rotterdam, the 
Netherlands, who have agreed to host a book sprint for the Ardour FLOSS 
Manual. This book sprint will take place from Monday 23 November to 
Friday 27 November. There will be two sessions daily, one from 
13:00-17:00 (GMT +1) and one from 18:00-22:00 (GMT +1). Contributors can 
work at the moddr_lab (Willem Buytewechstraat 188, Rotterdam) during 
those hours, or remotely online at any time and communicate via the 
FLOSS Manuals IRC with the rest of us.

I wanted to post about it here and check with all of you before I 
publicize it more widely. The main thing is that FLOSS Manuals makes 
their books available as print-on-demand from Lulu.com. No profit or 
markup is planned, they will be sold at printing costs only. So I wanted 
to be sure this doesn't interfere with anybody else's plans for the 
Ardour manual before we go ahead. Other feedback on this project is also 
welcome! As long as there are no objections, I will post information to 
Ardour-users, the FLOSS Manuals discussion list, and perhaps 
Linux-Audio-Users and a few others later this week.

I see that there is an outline of a manual already in place, and my 
suggestion would be to start by copying over what is there already to 
the FLOSS Manuals page (I will try to do this in the coming weeks) and 
use the sprint to get it up to date. Those interested in contributing 
should go to the FLOSS Manuals site and create a login for themselves.

The URL for the editing interface of the Ardour FLOSS Manual is here: 
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Ardour/

As you can see, it is quite empty at this point! ;-)

At the end of the week, the completed manual will then appear on the 
list of published manuals on the main FLOSS Manuals page: 
http://en.flossmanuals.net/

What would be good as a starting point would be for interested persons 
to pick a section to update, or propose new sections (I would personally 
love to see a section on mastering with Ardour and Jamin, for example, 
or an up to date list of keyboard shortcuts!). The Ardour-users list 
might be a good place for that, so please preserve the [Ardour FLOSS 
Manual] section of the Subject line so I can find those messages 
quicker. Devs, please let us know if you would prefer the discussion 
moved someplace else, such as Ardour-dev. During the sprint itself, the 
FLOSS Manuals IRC can be used with your favorite client, and it is also 
embedded directly into the editing interface.

You might also look over some of the existing FLOSS Manuals for examples 
of how they are formatted. A rough outline might go as follows (merging 
existing manual with FLOSS Manual conventions):

# INTRODUCTION
	1.1. Formatting Conventions
	1.2. Midi Configuration
	1.3. Mouse and Keyboard Bindings
	1.4. Interface Basics
	1.5. What's Different about Ardour
	1.6. Why is it called "Ardour" and other questions

# INSTALLING
	LINUX (various types...)
	OSX
	(will need to duplicate INSTALLING sections for JACK, QJACKCTL & JAMIN)

#GETTING STARTED
	CONFIGURING
	STARTING JACK/QJACKCTL
	STARTING ARDOUR
	CONNECTING WITH QJACKCTL
	2.1. Sessions
	2.2. Getting Audio In, Out and Around Your Computer

# INTERFACE
	2.3. Windows
	2.4. The Editor
	2.5. The Mixer
	2.6. Tracks and Busses
	2.7. Clocks
	2.8. Other Windows
	KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
	etc etc

# TUTORIALS
	3. Using Existing Audio
		3.1. Importing and Embedding
		3.2. Supported External Audio File Formats
		3.3. Using audio files as tracks or regions?
		3.4. How to import/embed
		3.5. Working with Tags
		3.6. Searching Freesound for soundfiles (optional)

	4. Basic Editing
		4.1. Editing Concepts
		4.2. Working with Playlists
		4.3. Working with Ranges
		4.4. Working with Regions

	5. Advanced Editing

		5.1. Working with Crossfades
		5.2. Working with layers

	6. Exporting

		6.1. Exporting to CD

	7. Mixing
		7.1. Automation
     		7.2. Using Plugins
     		7.3. Using VST Plugins

	8. Recording

		8.1. Basic Recording
		8.2. Monitoring
		8.3. Setting Up To Record

	9. Synchronization

		9.1. Synchronization Concepts
		9.2. Video Synchronization via MTC

	10. Using Control Surfaces

		10.1. Behringer DDX3216
		10.2. Using a BCF2000
		10.3. Using a Frontier Design Tranzport
		10.4. Using a Generic MIDI control surface
		10.5. Configuring USB device access (Linux only)
		10.6. Using the Mackie driver for MCU and BCF2000

	MASTERING WITH JAMIN
	etc etc

# APPENDICES
	1. Problems, Bugs and Known Issues
	GLOSSARY (many terms can be borrowed from existing manuals)
	ADDITIONAL HELP (irc, forums, mailing lists)
	CREDITS

I will also set up the chapters before the sprint with the necessary 
sections, using the existing Ardour manual as a guide as above. Input on 
this topic would be great.

A few questions you might have:

---What is FLOSS Manuals?

http://en.flossmanuals.net/

  FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals about free and open source 
software together with the tools used to create them and the community 
that uses those tools. They include authors, editors, artists, software 
developers, activists, and many others. There are manuals that explain 
how to install and use a range of free and open source softwares, about 
how to do things (like design) with open source software, and manuals 
about free culture services that use or support free software and formats.

Anyone can contribute to a manual – to fix a spelling mistake, to add a 
more detailed explanation, to write a new chapter, or to start a whole 
new manual on a topic.

---What is a Book Sprint?

Book Sprints are an innovative format based on Code Sprints but with the 
focus on producing documentation instead of code. A sprint brings 
together a group of writers, editors, and perhaps an artist and 
production specialist, to go from outline to published book in five days.

Writing a book in a week is an incredible and demanding feat. It was 
enabled by the FLOSS Manuals platform which has turned the corner from 
wiki to collaborative publishing platform. The platform enables fluent 
collaboration with local and remote writers, a low technical threshold 
and an automated print source generator that produces beautiful book 
formatted PDF. Upload this to a print on demand service and you have a 
fast moving process able to produce books at the same rate programmers 
change the software.

I look forward to hearing from you all about this!
Best,
Derek

-- 
::: derek holzer ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista ::: 
http://www.vimeo.com/macumbista :::
---Oblique Strategy # 7:
"Accept advice"