Friday, January 18, 2008

OLPC Activity Handbook

I think I previously mentioned that Daniel, Helga and me are currently working on the so-called "Activity Handbook". To quote myself from the introduction of the handbook:

"The purpose of this handbook is to provide you with all the information you need in
order to get started with software development for the OLPC XO."

Last weekend we managed to finish the first few chapters and we therefore decided to post the activity handbook over on the OLPC Austria website. Currently there are two downloads available, the first pdf is optimized for printing purposes (with alternating margins, etc.) while the second one is meant for regular viewing.

We're working on cleaning up the DocBook files (basically the source-code of the book) so we can also make them available to the community. This will enable people to contribute by submitting corrections, additional information and extra chapters in the form of patches. Therefore the whole project is very open and we encourage anyone to contribute to it! We're already working on the next chapters and we're also integrating some of the outstanding feedback that we've gotten from other OLPC Austria members.


This is definitely one of the most interesting projects I've ever been involved in and while it's a lot of hard work I'm having a great time doing it. I'm really learning a lot along the way and it's fun to learn Python while also spending a lot of time thinking about how to come up with a readable and useful documentation.

Stay tuned for updates in the future!

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