Re: users guide - some thoughts

["David C. Mason" <dcm redhat com>]

Alexander Kirillov <kirillov@math.sunysb.edu> writes:

[For those of you new to the project, Sasha has done great work on the
Russian translation of the GUG as well as edits.]


> 1. In the users guide, there is documentation for exactly 2
> applications: CD player and gcal. Why those two, of hundreds? Any
> special reason? As for applets: most of them are covered, but some are still
> missing (for example, keyboard switcher applet). 

A year ago (more?) those were started to give people the idea of what
type of writing should be done for apps. The idea was for the apps to
get docs that would be included in the GUG. It never happened because
no one else would write docs.

We need *all* apps and *all* applets documented - you are correct. I
haven't done them because I was told that after some core stuff was
done, the API reference for gtk and gnome were much more important
than finishing the GUG. So that is what I have done since 1.0 except
for a few changes and additions. I have tried countless times to get
others to write. Usually there is some enthusiasm and then they
disappear.

The list is a part of the organization earthtone did such a good job
with. So it is coming - lend a hand.


> 2. I tried to read the users-guide from the point of view of someone new
> to Unix and see what are prerequsites. I found it sufficiently
> self-contained; however, there are several things that it does rely
> on:
> 
> a. General stuff on Unix filesystems: what symbols can be used in
> filenames, what the notations like ./, ../, ~/ etc stand for;
> permissions and users; wildcards. 
> 
> b. Symlinks
> 
> c. Mounting/unmounting 


You are right Sasha, I think this is very important and I think we
would all love to see such a chapter/appendix. Please give it a go.

Thanks for *still* being around and enthusiastic!

Oh, and by the way - we will make it so that the translations are
loaded better(at all) when the tarball is built, I think you mentioned
this once. It is a matter of organizing everything now that we have
moved from gifs to pngs.

Cheers,

Dave

-- 

          David Mason
        Red Hat AD Labs

        dcm@redhat.com