new users-guide

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

Hi guys:

I was thinking of what documentation we should ship with gnome 2.0
(other than obvious, manuals for all apps). Here are some of my
thoughts: 

 We do not need users-guide to contain all manuals for panel, file
 manager etc - hopefully by 2.0 cross referencing will work, so we
 could just refer to it. Thus, I'd suggest that we ship:

  1. Manuals for all apps (of course) - including Nautilus, panel,
     etc.

  2. A very short (like 12 pages) "users guide/introduction" which
  contains necessary minimum - like "quickstart" section of ug-1.2
  (see below)

  3. FAQ, glossary, and maybe some task-specific documents (such as
  "localizing gnome" or "site-wide customization of gnome for
  sysadmins"). Also, we need to ship GPL and FDL as separate docs, and
  refer to them from all our docs.
 
  4. Interactive tutorials if we can make them (which I am not sure
  about at the moment).

  5. Maybe, "reference manual" - full documentation for major gnome
     components bound together in one doc, like the current
     users-guide? 
  
         

I was mostly thinking about 2. I imagined it as something user can
actually *read* from cover to cover; it should also contain links to
all other sources of information.Here is a draft table of contents:

1. What is gnome

2. About this guide

3. Desktop and panel; main menu, starting gnome and logging out (2-3 pp)

4. Dealing with windows (raising/lowering/closing/miminimizing/moving,
   taskbar - all for default config. of sawfish) (1-2 pp)

5. File manager (2 pp)

6. Customizing (just brief description of changing background, desktop
   theme and wm theme, and reference to control-center for everytning
   else)

7. What apps ship with gnome (just the list of most useful apps and
   utilities, with 1 line description and link for each)

8. Minimal troubleshooting (killing frozen app; killing X11 by
   ctrl-alt-bksp; starting "clear session" by erasing all gnome config
   files)


9. Other sources of info (links to FAQ, www.gnome.org, maybe irc
   channel, LDP docs, etc.). Also: link to "newbies" document (at the
   moment, it is appendix to ug-1.2); I am not sure if I want to
   include it as appendix to new users guide or as separate doc -
   doesn't make much difference if we have cross-linking working.

 Aaron told me that he was thinking about a similar doc tailored for
helix-gnome.

The major problem is that this thing really uses linking to other docs
a lot, and it is not clear whether we will have this by 1.4. Dan said
he'd talk to developers (Ali) and try to find out. If not, then maybe
we better use the current users-guide (or both the short one as
discussed above and long "reference manual")? 

Comments? Suggestions? 

Sasha