[mythtv] New project ideas/proposals - documentation tools

[Jason W. Thompson]

A paper user guide sounds very useful.  I know I've spent many 
frustrating hours trying to find help for this and that.  As for 
MythHelp, I think all modules need a help button.  It could be an online 
guide to the specific feature.

Ramzy Darwish wrote:

>Hello All,
>I have been trying to find a way that I could contribute to mythtv for
>some time now and I am hoping what I have in mind is a desired
>feature.
>
>I have two actually, but they are very closely related.
>
>1) Myth-UsersGuide - I want to write up a printable booklet that would
>be like a user's guide for people USING mythtv. It would be an
>'elaborated' subset of the great docs at mythtv.org and would be
>intended to be used by the 'other' people using mythtv in our homes.
>Like spouses and kids who don't know all of the intimate details that
>'administrators' learn through getting the system up to snuff. it
>would be similar to any user's guide you get with a tv or vcr or
>something (I may even look at what the Tivo user's guide is like) and
>would have a section on using and changing settings for the main myth
>program as well as all of the 'plugins' like mythmusic and mythnews,
>etc., It would have pictures with labels and all that good stuff and
>would be meant to be used by a novice or someone who knows nothing
>about linux or how this thing works at all.
>
>Is anybody working on this? Can I help? DO you think it would be useful?
>
>2) MythHelp or MythSearch 
>I intend this to be an addin module for mythweb that would allow you
>to search the main documentation resources that we all look at when
>trying to solve our problems. It would have a simple config file where
>you could add and remove websites (sites or documents) that a simple
>search engine would look through for help with problems. Right now, I
>was thinking it would search the mailing-lists, mythtv.org and
>mythtv.info, then maybe some of the larger howtos (jarod's of course,
>magicitx.com, etc.,). And maybe it could have a running list of FAQs
>or recently asked questions on the mailing lists as a front page.
>
>What do you all think? Is it just as simple to go to google? Is this
>unnecessary? I don't know PHP, but I assume it's not too bad (i know
>perl and python) and could easily modify/extend mythweb to do this.
>Does anyone know of a good open source search engine that I could use,
>or would I have to write my own (not a problem).
>
>Please tell me what you think.
>
>
>  
>