Re: Users Guides vs. Help

[Preben Randhol <randhol pvv org>]

Chris Schumann <whizkid@dwave.net> writes:

| On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
| >        I still think it would be more effective just to list all
| > important applications in the users guide, giving, say, 4-5 lines
| > description of what each of them does (as in gnome software map)
| 
| > > The user guide could contain a "getting started" selection
| > > of the apps help/tutorial. The reason is that otherwise the User Guide
| > > will be extremely long and needs to be maintained very often. 
| 
| While we're sending opinions, can we agree that "Introducing Windows 95"
| is really not very complete at all? Good. Now that we have a bad example,
| let's try to think what we would have wanted and our audience.

Sorry haven't read that one. Wonder why ;-)

| 
| These are people who are, at the minimum, giving linux and GNOME a serious
| try. There are some things they'll need to know: How to start a program,
| switch between them, how and why to maintain their computer, and how to
| get online help. One good thing about "Introducing..." is that it is
| small. A huge tome will intimidate some people just because of its size.

Yes, this is a problem. I mean if you put the manuals for Word, Excel
etc on top of each other you get quickly discouraged. So it is very
nice with documentation that provide a quick guided tour of the main
features. But if this should go into the user guide it must be a
vital/major app for Gnome. 

-- 
Preben Randhol                 Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, 
[randhol@pvv.org]              And thou art wedded to calamity. 
[http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/]                    -- W. Shakespeare