# Distributing Your Documentation

## Before Distributing Your Documentation

Before you distribute your documentation, there are a few more things that you will need to check and possibly add to your document.

Spelling and Grammar Check

  You can read more about helper applications in . You should also check your document for its overall flow and clarity.

Abstract and Other Meta Data

  Add a short paragraph which clearly defines the scope of your document. For more information on how to add this information using DocBook please read

Acknowledgments

  Give credit where credit is due. For more information about when to give credit, read .

License and Copyright

  The LDP distributes documents, however, the author maintains the copyright on the document. All documents accepted by the LDP must contain a license and copyright notice. You can read more about this in . You may also want to add a Disclaimer, but this is optional. More about this in .

Validate the Markup

  If you are submitting a DocBook or LinuxDoc document, make sure the markup is valid. Read why in .

Obtain Peer Reviews

  You may want to have others review your document before submitting it to the LDP. Ask people for a Peer Review and/or a Technical Accuracy Review. Since not all mailing lists will respond favorably to attachments, you may wish to set up a temporary web site which houses your document. Note: this is absolutely not required.

## Licensing and Copyright

In order for a document to be accepted by the LDP, it must be licensed and conform to the LICENSE REQUIREMENTS section of the LDP Manifesto located at http://www.tldp.org/manifesto.html.

We recommend using the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), one of the Creative Commons Licenses (such as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike and Attribution-ShareAlike), or the LDP license (currently under review). The full text of the license must be included in your document, including the title and version of the license you are using. The LDP will not accept new documents that do not meet licensing requirements.

### Debian-compatible licenses

The Debian package maintainer for LDP documents has divided the LDP documents into those with a free license and those with a non-free license. For a summary of this list, please read Debian License Summaries. Currently the Artistic License, BSD License and the GNU General Public License are listed as free. These licenses will also be accepted by the LDP. The definition of non-free has not been made transparent. By choosing another license that has any kind of restriction on redistribution or whether or not the document may be modified, your document may be put into the non-free package instead of the free package. We are working with Debian to clarify how these decisions are made.

A DocBook-formatted copy of the license is available in .

For more information about open source documentation and licensing, please check .

### Copyright

As an author, you may retain the copyright and add other restrictions (for example: require approval for any translations or derivative works). If you are a new maintainer of an already-existing HOWTO, you must include the previous copyright statements of the previous author(s) and the dates they maintained that document.

### Disclaimer

If you would like to include a disclaimer, you may choose to use the following:

> &disclaimer;

### Licensing source code

If your HOWTO includes bits of source code that you want others to use, you may choose to release the source code under GPL.

## Acknowledgments

Your document should have an Acknowledgments section, in which you mention everyone who has contributed to your document in any meaningful way. You should include translators and converters, as well as people who have sent you lots of good feedback, perhaps the person who taught you the knowledge you are now passing on, and anybody else who was instrumental in making the document what it is. Most authors put this section at the end of their document.

When someone else assists in the production of an LDP document, you should give them proper attribution, and there are DocBook tags designed to do this. This section will show you the tags you should use, as well as other ways of giving credit where credit is due. Crediting editors is easy - there is already an `editor`tag in DocBook. But there are two special cases where you need to credit someone, but DocBook doesn't provide a special tag. These are translators and converters.

A converter is someone who performs a source code conversion, for instance from HTML to DocBook XML. Source code conversions help the LDP achieve long term goals for meta-data, and allow us to distribute documentation in many different formats.

Translators take your original document and translate it into other human-readable languages, from English to Japanese for example, or from German to English. Each translation allows many more people all over the world to make use of your document and of the Linux operating system!

We recommend that you acknowledge converters in the comment for the initial version released in the new format, and we recommend that you credit translators in each version which they have translated.

### Acknowledgments translated in DocBook

For more information on how to add these credits using DocBook please read

## TLDP Review Process

Before your document is accepted to the LDP collection it will undergo at least three formal reviews. These reviews include a technical accuracy review, a language review and a metadata review. All new documents must pass these reviews before being accepted into the collection.

When you feel your document is finished, email a copy to the submit mailing list (submit@en.tldp.org). Please include the title of your document and Final Review Required in the subject line of your email. A team of volunteers will be assigned to your document for each of the reviews. It may take up to a week to gather a team who is qualified to review your document. Typically the technical review happens first, followed by the language review and finally the metadata review. Your reviewers will read your document give you feedback on whether or not they think your document is ready for publication in the LDP collection.

Your reviewers may have specific points that must be changed. Once you have made the changes submit your document back to your review team. They will review the document again and advise you on whether or not your document is ready for inclusion in the LDP collection. You may need to undergo several edits before your document is ready. Or it may not require any additional work. Be prepared to make at least one round of changes for both the technical and language reviews. Ideally this exchange will happen in the LDP's git repository to better track each of the changes that are made, and keep track of the most current version of your document.

Once your document has passed both the technical and language reviews, you may submit it by following the instructions in .

### Comparing Two Source Files

Your reviewer may make changes directly to your source file, or they may put their suggestions in a separate email. If they are working with the source file directly, and your document is using DocBook XML, you may find XMLdiff useful to see the changes that your reviewer has made to your source file. It is a python tool that figures out the differences between two similar XML files, in the same way the diff utility compares text files.

XMLdiff is available from .

For more information on what the reviewers will be looking for, please read the Linux Documentation Project Reviewer HOWTO.

## Submission to LDP for publication

### The final step

This section contains information on what to do after your document has received both a technical and language review by the LDP volunteers.

As part of the review process a Review Coordinator will add your document to github (including any associated image files) and notify the submit mailing list that your document is ready for publication.