Linux Training - Contributing

Whether you are submitting original or modified text to the Linux Training Materials Project, please follow the Guidelines for Content, Structure and Style outlined below. Whilst we appreciate that some authors may dislike using LaTeX, we simply do not have the resources to support multiple document formats at this time. We will, however, consider translations to and from engish, if volunteers can be found to maintain them.  

Modifications

If you would like to contribute corrections or enhancements to existing course modules in the Linux Training Materials Project, send a copy of the new text to the original author (alteration to modules contributed by GBdirect should be sent to [email protected].

The LaTeX source for the new text should include the following (`commented out' by putting a percentage sign at the beginning of the appropriate lines):

• Exact copies of the original text blocks you have replaced with your own.
• Full descriptions of how you believe your own changes correct or enhance the original text blocks

Original Modules

New modules, or requests for other people to write specific modules should be sent to [email protected]

Apart from adhering to our Guidelines for Content, Structure and Style we ask potential authors to think very carefully about the usefulness of any modules or courses they submit.

To avoid unnecessary duplication, please take a good look at our Current, Forthcoming, and Proposed modules (accessed via the News menu item), before you begin writing. If you have expertise in the area of a proposed module, please consider collaborating with the proposers and/or other contributors.

Guidelines for Content, Structure and Style

Content

Unless it is submitted as part of an entire course (e.g. Perl Programming for Linux), or follows on from existing modules in the Linux Training Materials Project, the content of each module should be as self-contained as possible.

Modules which do assume some prior knowledge should state their pre-requisites in the format outlined on our current releases page.

Each module should contain approximately 20-25 pages of very brief bullet-pointed lecture notes; leaving detailed explanation to the instructor. In general, individual pages should contain no more than 4-6 bullet points.

Each module should be followed by graduated exercises to which more or less practical session time can be given, depending on the length of the overall course and the ability of the students. Ideally, the practical exercises should last for twice as long as the talk, but this will not be appropriate for all topics.  

Structure and Style

One of the principal reasons for writing documents in LaTeX is to relieve authors and editors of any responsibility for designing or maintaining consistent structure and style. Authors simply specify the logical function of a particular text block, using LaTeX commands which assign pre-defined graphic formatting to the block (a bit like style-sheets in word processors or HTML, but much more powerful). For example, if you define a line as an item in a nested list, LaTeX makes sure it gets the proper bullet point, indenting, font size, line-spacing, etc.

Writers only need to know a dozen or so LaTeX commands to produce notes in our house-style. The page layout commands are simply the basic ones which come with any LaTeX distribution and are fully documented in every book or manual on the language. The classic texts are LaTeX:

• A Document Preparation System by Leslie Lamport, Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-52983-1
• The LaTeX Companion by M. Goossens, F. Mittelbach, and A. Samarin, Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-54199-8

We have defined a small number of our own LaTeX commands to format entities like program names or user inputs. These are all defined in masterfile.tex which comes in linux_training.tar.gz, and they are explained in commented notes at the bottom of the file.