<sect1 id="manuals-production-identifying-goals">

    <title>Identifying Document Goals</title>

    <para>

        The first step in producing a documentation manual is to

        clearly understand what you exactly need to document and why

        you need to do so. The obvious answer to this question would

        be to describe the basic ideas behind an implementation so it

        can be useful once published. It is important that you find

        out the reasons you need to do what you are doing and, also,

        those helping you to retain the motivation to keep doing it in

        the future. Otherwise, without such foundations, you'll surely

        end up leaving the effort soon enough to make a lost cause

        from your initial work.

    </para>

    <para>

        Before <citetitle>The CentOS Artwork Repository File

        System</citetitle> documentation manual would exist, there was

        an emerging need to understand what each directory inside the

        growing directory layout was for, how it could be used and

        each directory could be connected one another. At that moment,

        the directory layout was very unstable and explaining the

        whole idea behind it was not possible, there were too many

        changing concepts floating around which needed to be

        considered in the same changing way.  So, to understand what

        was happening, the <citetitle>The CentOS Artwork Repository

        File System</citetitle> documentation manual was created.

    </para>

    <para>

        The <citetitle>The CentOS Artwork Repository File

        System</citetitle> manual was conceived based on the idea of

        documenting each directory inside the repository individually

        and, later, by considering all directory documentations

        altogether, it would be (hypothetically) possible to correct

        the whole idea through an improvement cycle that would

        consolidate the final idea we were trying to implement.

    </para>

    <para>

        Other documentation manuals can be based on reasons different

        from those described above, however, no matter what those

        reasons are, it will be helpful to make yourself a clean idea

        about what you are going to document exactly before putting

        your hands on it.

    </para>

</sect1>