# Authoring TLDP Documents: An Introduction

## Summary of The LDP Process

The following section outlines the process of creating and/or maintaining a document for the Linux Documentation Project. This section includes all steps--some of which may not be relevant to your specific document.

1. Join the discuss mailing list. Authors who are interested in taking over the maintenance of someone else's document should also join this list. This is to make sure the LDP knows who is working on what documentation.

   If you have not yet written your documentation, please review our documents (current, unmaintained and in progress) and submit a proposal to the list. Your proposal should include reasons why your document will be different than those already in the collection; or identify a subject that is currently missing from our documentation. For more information about writing proposals, please read .

   For more information about the mailing lists, please read or visit lists.tldp.org to subscribe. If your document has already been written, please submit a copy to the discuss list (or include the URL of where it can be found).

2. Write your document. If your document has not yet been written, please be sure to email the discuss list before you start writing. You may choose whatever format you feel most comfortable in to write your document. If it is not one of the formats accepted by the LDP a volunteer will convert it for you. For more information on writing technical documentation, please read .

3. If you are adding your own markup, you may also want to join the docbook mailing list. For more information about the LDP DocBook list please read . If you would like to start with a template, you may find the templates in useful. There is also a general introduction to markup in and a section full of examples at .

4. Submit your document for technical, language and metadata reviews. Do this by emailing your document to submit@en.tldp.org. In the subject line be sure give the title of the document. In the body of the email say that you are ready for the review process. Outline any additional reviews your document may have already received. You should be assigned a reviewer within the week. The reviews may take an additional week each. For more information about this process, please read .

   If your document is not already in DocBook or LinuxDoc format, a reviewer will convert it for you.

5. Once your document has been through each of the reviews a Review Coordinator will approve addint it to the git repository, update the version number to 1.0 and have the document published on the public Web site. For more information about your final submission to the LDP, please read .

### If you don't submit your document in DocBook format

The volunteer adding markup to your document may choose any accepted markup language. The Author Guide, however, will refer only to DocBook. If you are submitting plain text or some other format, please let the LDP know if you prefer to maintain your document in either LinuxDoc or DocBook, which are the accepted formats for end-results.

## Mailing Lists

You can subscribe to the following mailing lists:

- First is discuss@en.tldp.org, which is the main discussion group of the LDP.

- Another is the docbook@en.tldp.org list, which is for questions about DocBook use including markup and transformations. If you run into trouble with a particular markup tag, you can send your question here for answers.

You can subscribe to either list by sending a request message to either discuss-subscribe@en.tldp.org or docbook-subscribe@en.tldp.org. The subject of your message should read subscribe (no quotes). To remove yourself from the list, send an E-mail with the subject of unsubscribe to discuss-unsubscribe@en.tldp.org or docbook-unsubscribe@en.tldp.org.

If you are interested in DocBook beyond the simple markup of your LDP document, you may want to consider joining one of the OASIS DocBook mailing lists. Please see http://docbook.org/mailinglist/index.html for more information.