About 8 reasons why you should write for the php.net manual

Tuesday, October 16. 2007

About 8 reasons why you should write for the php.net manual

In response to a recent post by Hannes Magnusson titled "8 reasons why you should *not* write for the php.net manual", I offer about 8 reasons why you should. Although at times subtle, Hannes shares good points regarding some of the frustration that comes with working on a successful (and old) Open Source project like PHP. How do we appropriately credit the kind souls who seemingly work anonymously within the php.net CVS repository? Not sure, but here are about 8 reasons why you should write for the official PHP manual:

You'll make your mother and friends proud
You'll own a cool @php.net email address
You'll get to see and use your own work online for later use, and allow others to help improve upon it
You'll be happy to know that millions of developers benefit from your work daily
You'll gain experience using DocBook and the related tools to create documentation
You'll gain real karma by contributing to an Open Source project
You'll make new friends
You'll increase your Ohloh coolness factor
You'll be able to say "I write documentation for PHP, the most popular web scripting language on the planet"
You'll end up learning PHP, especially the quirks and changes that it goes through. 5.3.0 has what again?
You'll add the experience to your resume
You'll have an excuse to tell people... "It sounds fun but I promised to document SPL tonight so can't go"
You'll help make something better, something you use. It's good to use things that get better, right?
And lastly, it'll give you something else to blog about

There are plenty more reasons but eightish is a good number. It's worth noting that Hannes does an incredible amount of work for PHP as a webmaster, documentation geek, and php-src guy. See also the Documentation HOWTO for how to contribute.

Posted by philip in php at 07:58 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I want to say that if the English is not your native language, you can participate in translating the manual to your language and help people in your country understand it better.

Comment (1)

#1 Alex@Net (Homepage) on 2007-10-16 08:28 (Reply)

Good point, the more translators the better and more are needed. If interested, see the translation section of the doc howto.

People are also needed for other tasks like writing unit tests, monitoring user note submissions (to the manual), solving/submitting bugs, and more.

Comments (2)

#1.1 philip on 2007-10-16 11:03 (Reply)

don't know why php.net doesn't use wiki for php manual, I ask ed for a cvs translator account one year ago, and never get reponse from mailist, looks the exist translators only appear once a month there

Comment (1)

#2 hy on 2007-10-17 10:00 (Reply)

It's not a wiki mainly due to our need for DocBook and structure. There is a tool underway to allow easy patches to be created online (especially useful for translations) but it stalled due to lack of time by the developer.

As far as translations, and your account, last month I emailed every pending account so perhaps the email was lost but typically unless someone who requests an account writes the mailing list explaining why, and that they actually want to do work (and not just get an account for the sake of having an account)... they are overlooked/forgotten. But lately I've been emailing all those who make account requests and it's been working well. So, re-apply please :)

Comments (2)

#2.1 philip on 2007-10-17 11:35 (Reply)

I already benefit from those 14 points :) !

Comment (1)

#3 Adam (Homepage) on 2008-01-09 06:22 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry