RE: Copyright notices on manuals.

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miguel de Icaza [mailto:miguel@helixcode.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 3:19 PM
> To: damaged justice
> Cc: gnome-doc-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Re: Copyright notices on manuals.
> 
> > I suggest
> > 
> > GnomeFooApp
> > (c) by App Author
> > Documentation (c) by Doc Author
> 
> This is fully irrelevant to whoever is reading the documentation.
> This kind of thing should go into an `About' or `AUTHORS' section,
> page or something.
> 
> The reader of the documentation is trying to figure something out, and
> looking at a full screen worth of changelogs and attributions is just
> pointless.  

I agree that this sort of thing shouldn't be a big "feature" stuck into the
beginning of the documentation, although it would certainly look great in
the About box.  This does raise another point, that I think is pretty
important.  This has been discussed before, but I'll raise it again, because
it is so important. Each app needs to have at least two types of documents
associated with it.  I can write some good reference manuals.  What I mean
is, hen somebody fires up this application, knows that it has feature X, and
needs a reference to that feature and how to use it.  The other kind of
documentation is 'HOW-TO's.  Essentially tutorials, of varying scope, that
explain in detail "how to" do something.  These should be VERY closely
linked, to the reference manual, so that as you go through the tutorial, you
can "click" on any given step or action, and get a detailed view of the
things that can be done there.  
Have most people been writing reference manuals, or HOW-TOs?
	Grego