Believe it or not, I love writing documentation. I dunno why. One thing I enjoy about it is taking programs that have lots of options and breaking it down into clear and concise noob-friendly wording. The main reason for that is I remember all too well what it’s like being a beginner, and just not understanding what documentation is trying to tell you when it throws out all these references that you should have apparently already known about.
Once upon a time, I was really active on the Gentoo wiki. Then I became a staffer, and then a developer, and I shifted to working on the tree instead. I still miss just writing docs, though.
Anyway, I’ve been kinda half-heartedly wanting to write a quick doc for IVTV for a while now. For me though, it seems pretty simple: pick the right branch, load everything as modules, and emerge the ebuild and yer done. I figure some Gentoo-specific docs can’t hurt, though, so I went ahead and started on some tonight. I haven’t gotten really far just yet, because I’m still in the “gosh, this is so easy” stage that I can’t really come up with some content.
So, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas of what should go in this thing, lemme know. Here’s my half-written draft so far.
And for the record, if there’s any Gentoo multimedia docs you think we need, lemme know that as well.
Looks like a good start to me, and it’s just about where I’m at right now with my computer. (A suggestion is to make using 2.6.22 or greater the default instruction, and having a section about how you do it “the old way”.)
I’ve installed a PVR-150 and compiled the kernel modules. It shows up in dmesg, but I have not installed the ivtv package nor MythTV, Freevo or anything like that yet. I also have to figure out how to set up X to use dual output from my graphics card. That is one cable to the tv (1024×768 widescreen plasma) with correct aspect ratio, and one to my regular monitor. So that’s what I’m hoping to find in this doc when it’s done.
Anyway, thanks for all your work so far! 🙂