copyright dates not being updated

The copyright portion of this bug is valid.

The rest of the bug isn't really. http://doc.ubuntu.com/ is the in-development documentation. The live, complete documentation is at http://help.ubuntu.com/ and I think makes it clear which version of the documentation you're looking it.

That http://doc.ubuntu.com is the draft version could be perhaps made more explicit. Perhaps a watermark saying "draft" across the page backgrounds or something...

Just committed a fix to the Kubuntu branch. Thanks for the report Neal!

Thanks, Rich!

I still think that marking the version information for in-development documentation would be very helpful.

Surely we want people to be able to comment on this documentation in ways that make it clear what version they are commenting on, so the writer can easily tell if the issue has already been addressed, etc.

It seems that every other way we have of delivering content to people, we make it clear what the version is, via command line options, dpkg -l, wiki reversion info, etc.

So why not mark version information when we make documentation easily available for comment?

I think this is not a tiny issue - see also e.g. https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-doc/+bug/122297
Server Guide draft has higher Google rank than released version.

This is also true for the stuff at help.ubuntu.com. At least that says what release it is for, but not anything that would tell a user or documentation volunteer easily whether or not an update had been deployed, or where to find the source code for exactly what they are looking at.

Is it hard to add some version information or a link to get it?
If someone wanted to submit a patch to resolve this, what would need patching and where is the source for it?

Thanks,

Neal McBurnett wrote:
> I still think that marking the version information for in-development
> documentation would be very helpful.
> Surely we want people to be able to comment on this documentation in
> ways that make it clear what version they are commenting on, so the
> writer can easily tell if the issue has already been addressed, etc.
>
> It seems that every other way we have of delivering content to people,
> we make it clear what the version is, via command line options, dpkg -l,
> wiki reversion info, etc.
>
> So why not mark version information when we make documentation easily
> available for comment?

I'd have thought it was self-evident that the draft documentation is up
to date. Perhaps it would be useful to include the bzr revision number
somewhere.

> I think this is not a tiny issue - see also e.g. https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-doc/+bug/122297
> Server Guide draft has higher Google rank than released version.

That's orthogonal.

> This is also true for the stuff at help.ubuntu.com. At least that says
> what release it is for, but not anything that would tell a user or
> documentation volunteer easily whether or not an update had been
> deployed, or where to find the source code for exactly what they are
> looking at.

I think people would always assume it's always up to date. If it isn't,
it should be.

> Is it hard to add some version information or a link to get it?
> If someone wanted to submit a patch to resolve this, what would need patching and where is the source for it?

Well it'd probably want to be website specific so may be one of these files:
teamstuff/html2docbook/html2docbook.xsl
teamstuff/doc.ubuntu.com/sidebar.inc.php

You can get the code here:
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-doc/ubuntu-doc/ubuntu-hardy

Cheers,
Dean

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 8:46 AM, Dean Sas <email address hidden> wrote:
> Neal McBurnett wrote:
> > I still think that marking the version information for in-development
> > documentation would be very helpful.

No, I don't agree. As Dean has said, the site at doc.ubuntu.com is
always up to date with the latest docteam branches - it's updated
every 12 hours.

It hardly ever happens that someone reports a bug which has already
been fixed in the documentation, but when it does, it's extremely easy
to find out. I really don't think there is a problem here worth
solving.

> > This is also true for the stuff at help.ubuntu.com. At least that says
> > what release it is for, but not anything that would tell a user or
> > documentation volunteer easily whether or not an update had been
> > deployed, or where to find the source code for exactly what they are
> > looking at.
>
> I think people would always assume it's always up to date. If it isn't,
> it should be.

I agree. At the moment we don't have a good process in place for
deploying updates to documentation - so our documentation doesn't
change after release and help.u.c is up to date. When planning how to
deploy updates, ensuring help.ubuntu.com is up to date has always been
central to that discussion. Either way, the website will be kept up to
date and peoples' natural assumption will be correct :)

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

I've amended the copyright notice to 2008 and merged it across all branches (we should strive to keep common files the same across all branches).

I don't think we need to list past years, just 2008 is enough.

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-docs - 8.03.2 in Ubuntu hardy.

This bug was fixed in the package kubuntu-docs - 8.04-2

---------------
kubuntu-docs (8.04-2) hardy; urgency=low

  * Latest checkout of docs from bzr
  * Added lintian overrides file (LP: #194843)
  * Fixed the firefox startpage fonts (LP: #195590)
  * Updated firefox startpage translations (LP: #203422)
  * Added link to log to allow page to link to kubuntu.org (LP: #108083)
  * Updated copyright dates (LP: #192202)
  * Fixed faulty strings in games.xml
    - (LP: #201781)
    - (LP: #201785)

 -- <email address hidden> (Richard A. Johnson) Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:14:36 -0500

This bug doesn't seem to have been resolved, even after the hardy docs have gone up.
I.e. these pages:
http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/about-ubuntu/C/index.html
http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/serverguide/C/index.html

still say they are 2 years old:
  "Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006 Canonical Ltd. and members of the Ubuntu Documentation Project"

Is the fix still in some release pipeline? Or did it get lost?

> I'd have thought it was self-evident that the draft documentation is up to date. Perhaps it would be useful to include the bzr revision number somewhere.

A date of last update, or bzr revision number would provide very helpful information and add a confidence factor for viewers. I don't think the "draft" markings give a significant hint that something is up-to-date - old drafts litter the WWW.