I'd like to draw your attention to
http://joomla.github.com/joomla-platform/. We've converted the platform manual files (and coding standards documentation) from DocBook XML to Markdown. We believe this will be significantly easier for people to help maintain and expand going forward. The files can still be found at
https://github.com/joomla/joomla-platform/tree/staging/docs, and you can send pull requests to expand/enhance the manual just as before ... we just think this will be easier for everyone.
I'm exploring using pandoc,
http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/, to auto-generate the manual in several formats for releases. If anyone else is interested in this sort of thing I'd welcome the help, just drop me a line. Also, it should go without saying but I'll say it anyway... please help us expand and enhance the platform manual!!
Cheers.