Re: Some more help manuals a la style guide.

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 11:24:49AM +0100 or thereabouts, Pat Costello wrote:
> Hi everyone, 
> 
> The Sun team have completed rewrites of some more applet and application 
> online reference manuals to the recommendations in the style guide. You 
> can find the manuals in the following location: 
> 
> http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=gnome-docu/gdp/contrib
> 
> Character Picker: charpick directory
> GNOME Terminal: gnome-terminal directory
> Screenshooter: screenshooter directory

I'm responsible for screenshooter and had some input into the 
gnome-terminal one. Screenshooter was one of my first attempts
at docbook and I have long been conscious that I needed to Do
Something About It. I love the screenshooter alterations. They
should certainly go in. Thanks for doing it. 

There are bugs in the gnome-terminal one :) Someone, I think,
is too used to xterm where options are specified with a single
hyphen:

<para><command>gnome-terminal -background blue -title SERVER2</command></para>

should be: 

<para><command>gnome-terminal --background blue --title SERVER2</command></para>

Also, I think some of the 
<itemizedlist>
 <listitem>
  <para>
    foo. Does this.
  <para>
 </listitem>
</itemizedlist>

should be 

<varlistentry>
 <term>foo</term>
 <listitem>
  <para>
    Does this. 
  </para>
 </listitem>
</varlistentry>

But I am always saying that.  :) 

> These are still works in progress so there are some things we need to 
> do yet, such as insert screenshots and format the source code. We will
> be scheduling these jobs for translation later in August so if anyone 
> would like to review the manuals and send us comments, please do so. 

I'll look properly this afternoon, I hope. 

Thank you very much indeed for doing this. I have been trying to 
do this with some docs. Short sentences make them a lot more readable.
It's just harder to write, because it requires some discipline. I am 
reminded of -- hmm, George Washington? "I am writing you a long letter 
because I do not have time to write a short one". Seems to apply 
to sentences, too!

Telsa