Re: (Was The GNOME Handbook of Writing Software Documentation)

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim styx net>]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2000 at 11:50:06AM -0500, David C. Mason wrote:
> lacage@email.enst.fr (Mathieu Lacage) writes:

>> I don't understand this. I am sorry: GUI, especially the one which seems 
>> to be chosen by conglomerate (never tried it : just seen screenshots)
>> is not obliged to allow you only to write and not structure. 
>> Such an application seems okay as it allows easy markup and visual
>> feedback of the markup.
 
>> However, you mentioned you tested it which I have not and you seem to say
>> that it is not the case. Please, could you let us know why: if it is so,
>> then the app needs to be improved.
 
> When you are in the process of writing an sgml/xml doc in (for
> example) Emacs and you come across a word that needs to contain markup
> - you add the markup. Its all part of the process of your writing. If
> you use a GUI to do the document and you come across the word - you
> have to stop typing - grab the mouse - go through some menus - find
> the tag you want - and 'register' the word with the markup. Most
> people end up typing the whole thing and then going back to the
> beginning and searching for words that need markup.

Conglomerate has hotkey support. At the moment, it only supports hotkey
markup of things you select with the mouse, but this will change. We might
emulate the Emacs way of doing it, or we might look at finding an even more
efficient way, but getting the structured writing to be a 1-pass process is a
concern, as is full mouseless operation. We write quite a lot of structured
documents internally, and we know that there's a need for this.


>> If you say that conglomerate output is bad, I take your word for it:
>> conglomerate is simply bad and this has to be corrected.
 
>> What I say is that :
>> 1) we will need to switch to XML for our docs.
>> 2) switching to XML has nothing to do with using GUI app to write docs.
>> 3) GUI apps like conglomerate are expected to lower the level of knowledge
>> users need to write doc. -> This is good. pause. This is good.
 
>> I am myself not likely to write any doc using such a GUI because
>> I like the Xemcs indentation of SGML/XML.
 
> Well your last line will answer one question - I like the indentation
> as well, but the output from Conglomerate does not indent - does not
> add returns - in fact, it has NO SPACES between words, phases,
> sentences, or paragraphs. It is a continuous stream of words that is
> incomprehensible when someone like you or I use Emacs to work on the
> doc.

We are very aware of this. It's definitely on our list of things to fix.
Please, don't judge the entire Conglomerate project on our release of a
quick-and-dirty proof of concept pre-alpha. I'm a little dismayed at the
tendency of people to regard things as writ in stone, even when we
specifically said that it wasn't, that this is just to show to a certain
degree how the GUI will work, etc. It seems this information wasn't heeded.

Instead, tell us about all your concerns, and we will fix them before
Conglomerate goes to 1.0. We're not some faceless corporation trying to
develop a very closed system, we want and need your feedback (in particular
on things we don't know about, of course, as opposed to this problem).

I'm thinking the Conglomerate website might have room for a "Known bugs and
fixes we plan to make before 1.0" page.

-- 
Joakim Ziegler - styx research director - joakim@styx.net
FIX sysop - FIXmud admin - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer