Call for programmers and site builders to help with docs infrastructure!

If you are an experienced site builder, or a medium-to-experience PHP programmer, the Docs Team needs your help! We have several things that we’d like to get done that will improve the infrastructure for documentation and for contributing to documentation in the Drupal project.

EDIT: I'm marking tasks "taken" if someone has spoken up to do them.
Update Sept 23 - new tasks added!!
Update November 15 - task list edited

Site Builder Tasks

These tasks involve site building for Drupal.org, such as adding a field to a content type, making a view block, maybe doing a bit of CSS tweaking, exporting the content type and view changes as a Feature, and getting these updates deployed on Drupal.org. (Mentoring help is available from Jennifer on the “getting the updates deployed” step, but to take on one of these tasks, you should have the site building knowledge necessary to build the desired functionality). Skills needed:

• Drush and/or Linux command line updates to site
• Views, CCK, building content types
• Features (at a very basic level)
• Some minor CSS tweaking and/or themeing for some projects

Tasks:

1. (done) http://drupal.org/node/528682 - Research and set up a solution that allows people to insert images into Documentation pages, without using IMG tags (since they have security implications).
2. (taken) http://drupal.org/node/733908 - Set up a nodereference on Documentation book pages that references a project, so a page can say which project(s) it references. Then make a tab on the Project page that would show all related doc pages.
3. (not doing this!)http://drupal.org/node/1027608 - Set up a noderef field for Forum posts to reference Book nodes, and a page/block to show related discussions on Book page nodes.
4. (taken) http://drupal.org/node/1289072 - Layout and nav tweaks for Book pages - this is dependent on a few other issues, so not quite available to be taken as a task yet!

If you want to take on one of these tasks, the process for getting them done would be:

1. Sign up for the task -- with a comment below, and assign the issue to yourself. You might want to discuss with Jennifer (jhodgdon) in IRC first.
2. Get a Drupal.org development server clone -- see http://drupal.org/node/1018084
3. Develop your solution on your development server clone.
4. Get some other people to review your solution.
5. Make a patch (or several patches) that contains your solution. Jennifer can help with this.
6. Get the patch deployed on Drupal.org. Jennifer can help with this.

Programming tasks - API module

The API module is what generates the api.drupal.org reference site. There are several issues with that module that I’d really like to see fixed (and many others that could be worked on too -- see http://drupal.org/project/issues/api). To work on one of these issues, add a comment to the issue explaining your time frame for working on it, assign it to yourself, make a patch, and set the patch to Needs Review.

High priority, well-defined tasks (which I've marked easy/medium/hard as a rough idea of how much knowledge of the API module and/or Drupal and PHP they would require, or at least I think so):

1. (taken) (medium) http://drupal.org/node/770784 - Create a new navigation header to facilitate navigate between different Drupal versions of the same function. Right now it us using hook_menu()’s local tasks for navigation, but this doesn’t work well.
2. (hard) http://drupal.org/node/990108 - Flx links so they work across projects.
3. (taken) (easy) http://drupal.org/node/1230198 - More prominent link to the file the function is in, when you are viewing a function page (or constant or class or whatever).
4. (hard) http://drupal.org/node/987450 - On a hook page, list the functions that implement the hook.
5. (taken) (hard) http://drupal.org/node/745204 - Turn hook names within module_invoke() and theme calls within theme() into links (and other things like that - Drupalism-awareness).
6. (taken) (easy) http://drupal.org/node/1189498 - Bug fix: See Also section is not working for constants.
7. (taken) (medium) http://drupal.org/node/1041718 -- Bug fix: files with -- in the name don’t work correctly for links.

Programming Tasks - Help System

We’d like to have a new help system for Drupal 8, which would include a revamped Help module in Drupal core, which would be able to import help documents from a new curated help site (docs.drupal.org or help.drupal.org or something like that). See http://drupal.org/node/1095012 for detailed proposal.

In order to get this done, there are several tasks outstanding (which are detailed on the above page). If you’d like to take one of these on, please comment below and discuss with Jennifer (jhodgdon) on IRC.

1. Create Help topic entities module. I think Carolyn is working on this -- how is that going?
2. Create an outline/map builder module. I think Tamas/yorirou has a start on this -- is it a sandbox yet?
3. Create a Glossary module, with an A-Z glossary index and the ability to have pop-up glossary links as a text filter.
4. (taken) Create the doc importer client and server modules.
5. (taken) Research workflow modules and techniques, and create (probably) an add-on for the Workbench module that would accomplish the editorial/translation workflows we need for the official help site.

Other Module Development Tasks

1. http://drupal.org/node/1289090 - Build a drop-down navigation block for Books, to replace the current (large, space-eating) book navigation we have on the sidebar of all Documentation pages currently
2. (not doing)Figure out how to convert existing Book page comments into Forum posts (dependent on Site Building item above where nodereference is added to Forum to point to Book page, so not really available to be taken as a task yet).