FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. At FLOSS Manuals you can find manuals for free and open source software like office applications, as well as web editing and browsing, and tools for playing, making, streaming and sharing audio and video.

FLOSS Manuals make free software more accessible by providing clear documentation that accurately explains their purpose and use. Each manual explains what the software does and what it doesn't do, what the interface looks like, how to install it, how to set the most basic configuration necessary, and how to use its main functions. To ensure the information remains useful and up to date the manuals are regularly developed to add more advanced uses, and to document changes and new versions of the software.

You can read and use the manuals in a number of different ways. They can be read online in separately indexed chapters, and you can use the website as a reference base in this way. You can also view, download, or print each manual as a PDF file. It is also possible to ‘remix’ manuals to create a version that only includes specific aspects of a particular manual, or that combines chapters from two or more manuals in a single document. These can be downloaded and printed, added to websites, and used for any purpose. You can also print a manual, or an individually ‘remixed’ manual, as a book via the print-to-order service of Lulu.com.

The manuals on FLOSS Manuals are written by a community of people, who do a variety of things to keep the manuals as up to date and accurate as possible. 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. The way in which FLOSS Manuals are written mirrors the way in which FLOSS (Free, libre open source) software itself is written: by a community who contribute to and maintain the content.

See below for more information on using, contributing to, and remixing FLOSS Manuals, and on Free, Libre Open Source Software and the aims of the FLOSS Manuals Foundation.

Read: using FLOSS Manuals manuals

In the ‘Read’ section of the website you will find links to all of the currently live and up to date manuals, organised according to what kind of software they document. When you click on the software name, for example ‘VLC’ under ‘Media players’, you will see the introductory chapter of that software’s manual. The first chapter of each manual explains what kind of software it is, and some of its features. The menu on the left hand side allows you to navigate to specific chapters – for example the installation chapter that relates to the operating system you use. At the top of that left hand menu are options to view the manual in a single page that can be easily printed, or to create a PDF of it.

Write: contributing to FLOSS Manuals

The 'write' section is where you can write new chapters or edit existing chapters. You can correct a spelling or grammatical mistake, or add an extra instruction that you think would be useful, update chapters to reflect new versions of the software, or add new chapters and whole manuals. It is easy to contribute to the manuals through the FLOSS Manuals’ wiki interface. This uses a WYSIWIG editor so that you don’t need to understand any wiki code in order to write, edit and update manuals.

The changes you make in the ‘write’ section do not go live until the changes are approved and the newly updated manual is ‘published’. It is only then that the changes are visible from the ‘Read’ section, so don’t feel intimidated about contributing here!

Each manual has a ‘maintainer’, someone who is responsible for keeping the information up to date, and for publishing appropriate edits and other contributions. If you would like to maintain one of the existing manuals then contact us.

If you wish to start a new manual on another software then contact us and we can create one.

All material is licensed under the GPL, which is contained on the FLOSS Manuals server here: http://www.flossmanuals.net/License

Remix: creating personalised combinations of FLOSS Manuals

All the information in FLOSS Manuals can be reused for whatever purpose you have in mind – for your own reference, to give away, to use as materials in workshops and classes, or anything else you wish. Because the manuals are licensed under the GPL you can copy and distribute the information in anyway you like.

To make this more useful we also provide some tools so that you can make your own manuals out of useful sections of other manuals. In the 'remix' section you can combine chapters from any of the manuals into a single pdf. The pdf will include a table of contents that is automatically generated to list the chapters you have included, and you can also add (and design) a cover.

The FLOSS Manuals Foundation

The FLOSS Manuals Foundation (Stichting FLOSS Manuals) creates free, open source documentation for free, open source software. FLOSS Manuals is a community of free documentation writers that publish free manuals about free software across multiple languages.

Free software can be freely run, studied, redistributed and improved without the restrictive and often expensive licensing systems attached to commercial proprietary software. Developers can adapt free software to their own needs, and can contribute to its ongoing communal development. FLOSS Manuals specifically document software that is free in this development sense and also in price. Free software projects are developed using established methodologies and tools, and sites like Savannah and Sourceforge support established social production models for developing free software. FLOSS Manuals provides the methodologies, tools, and social production models for developing documentation of free software.

By supporting quality, user-friendly documentation of Free, Libre, Open Source Software, FLOSS Manuals aims to encourage the use of this software, to support the technical and social revolution it enables.

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Podcast About FLOSS Manuals

Anne Gentle forwarded this information about a podcast published this week :

http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/09/05/podcast-whats-new-in-the-field-of-technical-communication/

The start of their discussion of FLOSS Manuals is around the 7:30 mark.

Quotes -
about the site "I've never seen anything quite like it..."
about the BookSprint "an amazing collaborative community type of event..."
about the community "the social organization of it is going to give it it's best foot forward..."

06 Sep 2008 - 17:42 by AdamHyde

FLOSS Manuals in the News

FM is starting to get some grit in the blogosphere. These appeared in the last week or so :

Just Write Click Blog (Anne Gentles) post about the OLPC / Sugar Book Sprint :

"We wrote seven manuals for One Laptop per Child in a week: one for Sugar, the operating system, one the XO, which is the hardware for all of the deployments for One Laptop per Child, and manuals for five Activities: Browse, Terminal, Write, Chat, and Record. I think our PDF page count is over 200 pages!"

http://justwriteclick.com/2008/09/01/booksprint-results/

Brianna Laughers Blog about her Wikimedia Commons manuals :

"FM is great for planned-ahead books with a small number of authors where the bulk of content is written over a known time period,"

http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/138/a-floss-manual-how-to-contribute-to-wikimedia-commons

Scott Able, organiser of the Doc Train conferences wrote about FM and forthcoming Keynote speech by Adam Hyde at the Doc Train event in Boston :

"A collaborative, creative event does exist for technical writers - it’s the BookSprint originated and hosted by FLOSS Manuals. "

http://www.thecontentwrangler.com/article/content_remix_floss_manuals_provides_community_technology_community_writing/

Janet Swishers Blog about Tech writing, post is about usability of FM within the general context of doc tools :

"Now that there is FLOSS Manuals, there simply is no longer a technological reason for any open source project not to have documentation. "

http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=184

Charles Jeter writing about how FM might kill Adobe Acrobats collab platform :

"FLOSS could bridge the gaps between Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring of content and true documentation. For the specific purpose of supporting open source collaborative efforts this is heaven sent."

http://charlesjeter.com/2008/08/30/floss-manuals-acrobat-killer/

03 Sep 2008 - 18:12 by AdamHyde

FLOSS Manuals Finalist in Awards

FLOSS manuals is on the short list for the New Zealand Open Source Awards (http://www.nzosa.org.nz/). The news came today from Chris Daish, the founder of the awards. We are excited to be nominated! The ceremony is in Wellington, New Zealand on Sept 24.

Last year FLOSS Manuals contributor JUlian Oliver won an award at the same event for Open Source and Art.

03 Sep 2008 - 17:16 by AdamHyde

XO / Sugar Sprint Complete

books_1

We have 7 manuals complete. Still a little work and fact checking to be done on the XO Networking. The process is ongoing of course but there is a tremendous amount already done. Above is a image of the trial covers designed by Lotte Meijer (FLOSS Manuals Designer, MoMA - http://www.lottemeijer.com).

We output the print ready PDF using our print on demand tools and then Lotte made a cover and we are testing the result through Lulu.com. When it is tested they will be available for sale at cost price or optional slightly more expensive edition for those that wish to make a donation towards the maintenance of the manuals and further XO / Sugar Book Sprints. More soon.....

31 Aug 2008 - 06:45 by AdamHyde

XO / Sugar Book Sprint Progress

The Book Sprint in Austin Texas is in its 4th day and we have done a tremendous amount of work. 7 manuals are almost done and the team is writing so we can have all the content in by the end of the day. That leaves Friday for clean up and editing. Here is a screen shot from my Desktop with the 7 PDFs generated using our print on demand tools.

7_1

It seems we have written over 250 pages of very useful material.

29 Aug 2008 - 03:52 by AdamHyde

XO / Sugar Book Sprint Underway!

Today (August 25) we began the XO / Sugar Book Sprint in Austin Texas. The sprint has been largely organised by Anne Gentle and Adam Hyde and is being hosted by local company Motive by invitation of David Cramer.

The Book Sprint aims to create documentation to support the forthcoming 2008 G1G1 OLPC roll out. Gathered at the event are currently :

Anne Gentle (Just Write Click / FLOSS Manuals)
Walter Bender (Sugar)
David Farning (Sugar)
Adam Holt (OLPC)
Adam Hyde (FLOSS Manuals)
Mikus Grinbergs (Austin XO Users Group)
Aaron Konstam (OLPC volunteer)

Through out the week more people will join us in real space and there are several remote contributors lined up.

sprintxo_1_1

Last night we kicked off with a planning meeting to outline the scope of the manuals and then met with the local Austin XO Users Group for coffee and dinner.The next day it was into writing at Motive.

We have set up the online tools so you too can contribute! To make a contribution please do the following :

1. Register

To contribute to the documentation you can register at FLOSS Manuals :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/register

2. Contribute!
There are several manuals planned to be finished by the end of the week (August 29) including a Sugar manual, an XO manual, and 5 Sugar Activities manuals. You can see the structure of the manuals here:

Sugar :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Sugar

XO (OLPC Hardware) :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/XO

Sugar Activities :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Browse
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Chat
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Record
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Terminal
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Write

To contribute you must register and then select a manual and a chapter to work on. if it is not marked 'complete' then press the edit button! Its as simple as that.

Contributions can include cleaning up layout, spell checking, adding images, proof reading, or taking responsibility for writing one of more chapters. You don't have to be a technical writer or a super geek, you just need to know how to write.

If you need to ask us questions about how to contribute then join the chat room listed above and ask us! We look forward to your contribution!

For more information on using FLOSS Manuals you may also wish to read
our manual :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals

3. Chat
Its a good idea to talk with us so we can help co-ordinate all contributions. We have a chat room for this using Internet Relay Chat (IRC). If you know how to use IRC you can connect to the following :
server : irc.freenode.net
channel : #olpc-content

If you do not know how to use IRC then visit the following web based chat software in your browser :
http://irc.flossmanuals.net/

Information on how to use this web based chat software is here :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/IRC

25 Aug 2008 - 22:21 by AdamHyde

OLPC / Sugar Book Sprint

We are currently raising money for the OLPC / Sugar Book Sprint to be held in Austin Texas, August 24-29. The Book Sprint will bring 6-9 writers together to write several manuals on OLPC and Sugar.

FLOSS Manuals is the official documentation repository for both these projects and we are aiming to build a team in Texas that will complete a series of manuals in an intensive working week and then work together remotely thereafter.

The sprint is organised by Anne Gentle (FLOSS Manuals / Just Write Click) and Adam Hyde (FLOSS Manuals). Writers are mostly coming from the USA and we hope to include the following :

Walter Bender (Sugar)
David Farning (Sugar)
Mel Chua (OLPC)
Adam Holt (OLPC)
Greg Dekoenigsberg (Redhat)
Anne Gentle (FM / JWC)
Emily Kaplan (Motorola)
David Kramer (Austin XO Users Group)
Janet Swisher (Austin XO Users Group)
Adam Hyde (FM)

All manuals created are free (libre + gratis)!

Currently we are looking for donations in $50 (USD) blocks or $500. $500 will get one of the writers to Austin and $50 will help cover some of the accomodation and food costs.

Item	Description	Cost
Travel
Walter Bender		$500
David Farning		$500
Mel Chua		$500
Adam Hyde	Traveling from EU	$1000
Emily Kaplan		$500
Greg Dekoenigsberg		$500
Accommodation
	6 people for 6 nights @ $50/night	$1800
Food
	7 people for 5 days @ $15/day Lunches are sponsored	$525

	Total	$5825

Please donate! (via Pledgie or direct to paypal)

01 Aug 2008 - 18:45 by AdamHyde

FM Translation Zone Beta

We are testing a new FLOSS Manuals Translation Zone for the translation of manuals. It is a temporary holding zone as our preferred method for managing languages is to set up specific FM language communities rather than just translate.

The translation zone enables side-by-side translation. We manage this through a plugin developed especially for FM called 'Xchange'. You can read more about Xchange and the translation workflow we have established here:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/XchangeIntro
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/XchangeBasics
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/XchangeTranslate

More news when it is tested!

31 Jul 2008 - 19:21 by AdamHyde

Screencast Experiments

I just created a screencast (a video recording of my screen with narration) for getting started editing manuals on FLOSS Manuals. It's my absolute first attempt at screencasting, so please forgive the amateur voiceover work.

The file is stored for the next 60 days at screencast.com, and you can view it there (with Adobe's Flash player installed in your browser).
Click here to see a FLOSS Manuals demonstration

I think this type of communication is one of the faster methods for demonstrating how to use technology. I'd love to get your feedback on the screencast and please give me suggestions for improvement. Thanks for taking a look!

27 Jul 2008 - 10:45 by AnneGentle

Inkscape Book Sprint Done

We completed the FLOSS Manuals / Inkscape Book Sprint. It was a tremendous success, with the team finishing 30 chapters in English and many (yet to be counted) chapters in French. In addition we pushed the FLOSS Manuals interface forward with a few new features including a status management system, and some new additions to the editor.

If that isn't enough, Brianna Laugher also finished a manual on Wikimedia Commons.

team

In amongst it all we also managed to have some fun!

Lastly, we also established a French FLOSS Manuals team consisting of Elisa de Castro Guerra, Cédric Gémy, and Olivier Gondouin Liu. More on all this in the next days.

12 Jul 2008 - 22:59 by AdamHyde