I have had this message highlighted for a while and wanted to respond
in more detail to a few points.
1. Write a draft table of contents. Suggest how we structure the document
This is now done in the dhis2_user_manual_en.xml document.
2. Merge what we already have into our document. Sources are the Indian
manual, the openhealthconsortium wiki, the help file inside
dhis-web-commons-resources. More?
I am still working on the other user manuals from India here..
ttp://folk.uio.no/knutst/pub/usermanual/
Some of them, particularly the reporting manual, need to be completely
rewritten, as the current manual is either too specific for India, or
not inline with the current set of functionality after the inclusion
of the Excel reporting module in trunk. I think that modules 5,6,7
will need to be rewritten from scratch. 8 (data maintainence) is in
pretty good shape, but will need some rework. 9 has been superceded by
the GIS document. module 10 (installation on widows) i am not sure
about. we should probably place this at the top of the main user
manual, and generalize it to both windows (installer if it is working,
DHIS2 Live) and Linux (Debian installer, DHIS 2 Live and a full-blown
Tomcat/Postgres setup).
...
Thanks for providing this list.
There was a bit set of links here. I have not take a look at any of
this in any level of detail, but my feeling is that it would take
quite a bit of work to synthesize it all together into a single
document. I think the Indian manuals provide a quite comprehensive set
of initial documents, but again, will require more work to generalize
them, and bring them up to date with the new functionality.
3. Create a structure file which assembles the modules into one document.
(Jason)
This has been done as outlined above. The first four Indian user
manuals, the GIS user manual, the documentation guide, the Excel
reporting guide and the technical architecture document have been
assembled into a single document. I think there is another document on
aggregation which I have not included yet.
Any volunteers?
Well, I am sitting here in Lusaka at the beginning of the rainy season
and hear nothing but crickets and tree frogs....chirp chirp chirp. I
will do what I can in my spare time, but some more help would be
great, especially from those that have become part of the
documentation team. 
It always work better if we can link this directly to needs or even
budgeted project tasks in countries implementing DHIS. A lot of
documentation is happening here already, but needs coordination and common
tools.
This is the whole point of a structure like DocBook. Documents can be
segmented into various parts and reassembled as necessary, depending
on the requirements. Different implementers in different countries
should be able to pick and choose what they want, depending on the
exact requirements.
I am sure Tanzania, India, Sierra Leone, and Malawi are all right now
either planning to write, are already writing new manuals, or are updating
their existing manuals.
This is great. Can you have them contact me?
These are the processes that should drive the manual writing and then
maybe more experienced DHIS implementers can do some quality control and
editing at some point.
Agreed. I can add whoever satisfies these requirements to the
documentation team.
Lars has also suggested that we might merge the documentation branch
back into trunk. I think this is not a good idea at this point, as in
the long run, there will be a different set of contributors, I hope. I
would suggest that we explore other solutions like possibly symlinking
the two branches (not even sure this is possible), so that some level
of control can be maintained over each of them. I do not have
particularly strong feelings on this either way, but it seems to feel
right to keep them separate to me.
As you can tell, I am feeling a bit frisky tonight, and want to try
and continue the bit of momentum that we have with the documentation
effort. Any suggestions, flames, or contributions welcome.
Best regards,
Jason