Re: Requesting Approval of Release notes general structure

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi, Murray!

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:51:54 +0100
Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:

> I would like to keep the user/admin/developer distinction that we
> added for 2.12 and 2.14:
> http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/en/
> 
> but lost for 2.16:
> http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/notes/en/
> In fact, I think we just lost the admin and developer stuff.
> 
> Was this a conscious decision at the time?
> 

It wasn't discussed on the ml. I just thought it makes sense and nobody
objected.

The distinction according to the role of the reader has no value:
We often need users to read the stuff for developers or admins.

For example, think the new development suite: It's clearly news for
developers, only. But we should want as many users as possible to read
and know about it. Why? Because that increases their trust in GNOME as
an application platform. The number of available applications (and the
total number of users) is the only objective reason to start using a
GNOME desktop.

Thus, it's too important to put it into some developer section that
many people wouldn't read.

The core problem is self-description: For example, many users at home
administrate the familiy PC but they wouldn't think of themselves as
"Admins". Thus, they probably ignored the Admin section of the 2.14
release notes and missed useful information about the Lockdown editor.

So I ignored the "user/admin" distinction and moved the developer stuff
under the headline "Code cleanups and backend improvements" which
doesn't sound so scary:

 http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/notes/en/rnbackend.html

In hindsight, "Security and backend improvements." might have
been even better. Well...


Regards,
Claus