Re: General GNOME User docs

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 04:58:43PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> 
> I think everybody agrees that we want to have some general documents which
> appear at the top of the Contents List in the help browser(Nautilus).  This 
> list will contain things like:
>   Introduction to GNOME
>   The GNOME User's Guide (possibly)
>   The [insert Linux distro name] Linux User's Guide
> 	(or The Solaris User's Guide, or ...HPUX... or ....)
>   (others?)
> 
> This is a rough list, but the idea is that general docs will appear at the
> top of the Contents List, and which docs appear will depend upon the
> GNOME distribution and Linux/Unix distribution.  There are two issues:
> 1) Which docs go in which packages?
> 2) How do we choose which ones go at the top of the Contents List
> 
> #2 should be easy - We will have a configuration file in Nautilus which
> will allow whoever distributes it (eg. Linux/Unix dist. vendor or Helix or
> Eazel) to set the default docs which appear at the top.  The sys admin can
> go in and change this of course.  Thus, we should not have a problem with
> showing the wrong docs at the top of the Contents List.
> 
> For #1: Suppose we write a "Linux Basics" doc and include it
> in gnome-user-docs. I believe we can use autoconf magic as Telsa suggests
> to guarantee that it is only installed for Linux systems.  

Here is one solution: we only include the very basic stuff
(like the "newbies" appendix I mention below) which applies to ALL unices,
and  leave it to vendors/distributors to add more detailed ones
tailored for their distros. 

> 
> BTW - I think one or two people have mentioned to me in the past that they
> were considering writing introductory Linux docs. (Sasha and Kevin?) Who
> is planning on working on this? Has anybody started?

Dan: I've not only started, I am almost finished with what I planned
to do: take a look at "If you are new to UNIX/Linux" appendix in
UG-1.2.  I want to turn it into a stand-alone document and add a little
bit to it for 1.4 (device names, X11), but not much. I want it to stay
real small.

I also wrote a draft of "intro to GNOME" - but I think this is not
what you are talking about. 

Sasha