Contents list

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

One of the main features I think we need to have in the new help system is
a "Contents" list.  This would be a tree of all the documentation
installed on a system, sorted by topic.  We might also have a section
which lists them by format for people who know what type of document they
are looking for (eg. a FAQ or man page).  We probably want the top few
items on this list to be general introductory documents, such as
"Introduction to GNOME" and "Linux Basics" (for Linux systems).

How does everybody think we should organize the documents in the list?  I
think we want to present all documentation on the system (GNOME docs, KDE
docs, FAQ's, HOWTO's, man pages, info pages, and anything else). "Anything
else" includes documentation for desktop-neutral software and commercial
software. We might consider having the option to only list a subset of
these documents(ie. newbies might turn off man pages and LDP HOWTO's which
are beyond the newby level) , but I would expect a complete help system
should be able to present all documentation.  So, we need to come up with
a good categorization of documents by subject.

To get us started on this, I put together an example contents tree(at
bottom). It is nowhere near complete(I randomly filled in some parts and
left others empty), and it is just an example of how we might organize
things.  As I put this together it became clear that some documents belong
in more than one place in the tree, which should not be a problem.

Do people like this approach?  If so, then we will need to evolve this
Contents list towards a complete, final draft. 

Dan

-------

- Introduction to GNOME
- Linux Basics

+Applications
  +Amusement
  +Applets
    +Amusement
    +Monitors
    +Multimedia
    +Network
    +Utility
    +Clock
  +Games
    +Arcade
    +Strategy
  +Graphics
  +Internet
    +Web 
    +Email
    +Messaging
    +PPP
  +Multimedia
    +Sound
    +Video
  +Office
    +Calendar
    +Data Processing
    +Database
    +Email
    +Financial
    +PIM
    +Word Processing
  +Utilities
  +X
    +Configuration
    +Screensavers
    +Window Managers

+Desktop
  +GNOME
  +KDE

+Development
  +Development Tools
    +Configuration
    +IDEs
    +Packaging
    +Profiling
    +RAD
  +Environments
    +Ada
    +C
    +GNOME
      -GNOME Configuration Files
      -GNOME Developer FAQ
      -GNOME Handbook of Writing Software Documentation
      -GNOME Technologies
      -GNOME and CORBA
      -Gtk+/GNOME Application Development
    +gtk+
    +Perl
    +Tcl/Tk
  +APIs
    +glib
    +glibc
    +gtk+
    +gtk--
    +libc
    +libglade
    +libtiff
+System
  +Administration
    +Backups
    +Filesystems
    +Networking
      +Appletalk
      +PPP
      +SMB
    +Users
  +Configuration
    +Config files
    +Configuration Tools
  +Hardware


+Documents By Type
  +Man Pages
    +User commands
    +system calls
    +library functions
    +special files
    +file formats
    +games
    +miscellaneous
    +administration
    +mann
  +Info Pages
  +FAQ
  +HOWTO