David Vincent-Jones wrote:

>Maybe a solution would be a community wide expansion of the current manual.
>If one person was established as the project coordinator through whom all
>contributions were forwarded for final editing and ensuring a standard
>format.

That poor person would go crazy within a month. The first week everybody 
sends his tutorial and personal wishes to him. Two weeks later everybody 
starts asking when the book will be ready and why their tutorial is not 
incorporated.
To do someting like that you'll need an editorial team, something like the 
POV-team or the IMP-team. A teamleader/spokesman and 3 - 5 (skilled) editors.

>Possibly we are looking at 3 volumes, much as the current manual, a. A
>Basic Tutorial; b. A Technical Reference; and c. Specialty Functions and
>Add-ons.

This is one of the important things to do for a Doc-team. Set up a structure 
for the book, what chapters, what levels etc. Once this (and more) is done 
they can go search the right autors for each part (chapter / paragraph ..). 
They have to give the autors quite detailed info on what is expected on a 
certain item.
One the article is written the team can edit it into the desired form. 
Illustrations and demo-scenes have to be made.
Then the next group of people come to action. The translators (German, 
French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, ...). The English language is 
not as common as manny people seem to think. I know of several Dutch who 
never really got to using POV because they simply don't understand the 
manual.

>The 'current' version of the book could always be available in pdf or other
>formats for those who treasure the printed page. Most 'quick print' shops
>now charge very little to run a pdf to paper.

This is a matter of using the right tools (SGML/XML?)to make the basic 
document. From there convert to anything you want.
Make shure the document is easy extendible. Adding a chapter for a patch 
should be a matter of writing the text with the right template and updating 
the index.

Ingo

-- 
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