Re: GNOME User Guide - draft.

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

Here are some minor comments:

1. In the section on window shortcuts (1.2.2) it'd quite useful to list
shortcuts to close/minimize window - they are used very frequently. Also,
in app. shortcuts, I'd add Ctrl+N (new document/file/game)

2. I was thinking of adding a subsection on some common features of GTK
GUI - non-obvious ones. Some of this  (detachable menus  and toolbars) you
mention in 2.9, but there is more. E.g.:  resizing panes and columns in
various list views, sorting by one of the columns, selecting multiple
items. Maybe we should extend 2.9? Or make a new section?



3. In section 2.5, global menu: you say that the "foot icon" and right
click on vacant spot on the panel produce the same menu, the global menu.
This is not so - at least in the default configuration of Gnome 1.4. The
foot menu is "main menu"; the the one you get by right-clicking on vacant
spot on the panel - "global menu".  They are the same originally. However,
they are configured separately as described in 5.4. Or is there a plan to
make "foot menu" by default a "global menu" rather than "main menu"? 

 This is
extremely confusing, and maybe we should forward this to usability team to
try convince the developers to make it easier to use. 

3. In 3.1.1, logging in to a Desktop Session: you may mention that GNOME
supports "named sessions", described in 3.3.7: you can have different
sessions saved, and at login time, you can select which of them you
want to login to. 

4. In Table 4-1, default panel items, you list "GNOME Help Browser" -
which will not be there in 2.0. At least, not the current one. Maybe there
will be a button to launch Help tab of Nautilus? 


5. In 4.8.2: there is a question regarding the action of right-click menu
items "Lock Screen now", "blank screen now", etc. My observation: if the
daemon is running (it when you first create this button), "lock screen
now" works as expected (locks screen); if you kill the daemon, "Lock
Screen now" has no effect. 

6. Section 6.1, Table 6-3: "To minimize the window ... choose Iconify" Of
course, it is not documenters' fault, but this should be corrected. If we
decided (and we did!) to use term "minimize", we should try to convince
the developers to use the same terms in their apps. Did anyone try to get
in touch with the developers? 


7. In 6.3.2.3: the screenshot must be updated - it shows gmc windows, and
gmc has been replaced by Nautilus. 


8. In Section 7 (Nauitlus): you should at least mention that Nau is also a
help browser. 

9. You have a question "how Nautilus recognizes types of files w/o
extensions"? The answer: Nau (or rather gnome-vfs) first uses what is
called "file magic"; as far as I can tell, this is a way of identifying
file type by matching several first lines of a file against a database of
known
patterns (it is probably oversimplified; if you need to know more, talk to
developers). Only if this fails, it looks at the extension. E.g., if you
have a jpeg image with no extension - or with extension pdf - Nautilus
will still recognize it as JPEG image. Try it. 

10. Also in section 7: you should mention that Nautilus also acts as FTP
client. You can enter URL of the form ftp://.... in Location field, and
Nautilus will show the files ion the FTP serevr in the same way as your
local files. It also supports non-anonymous FTP (which is not documented
but works): if I remember correctly, one should use URLs in the form

ftp://username:password host name domain


11. In 7.6: "you can use the File Types capplet to....
         ...
           associate a file type with a MIME type"
  this got me confused. I always considered the two to be synonymous. Can
you explain what this means??

12. In Table 7-10 (Nautilus preferences), there is a question about
"executable text files". AFAIK, this group tells what to do with scripts -
e.g., shell scripts. They can be treated as text file and opened in
editor, or they can be executed. 


OK, that's it for now - got to run. Will send more later. 

Sasha



On Tue, 6 Nov 2001 17:36:59 +0000 (GMT)
"Pat Costello" <Patrick Costello sun com> wrote:

> All, 
> 
> We are making available a draft of our GNOME User Guide for review by 
> the GNOME community. You can download the pdf file of the book from the 
> following location: 
> 
> /cvs/gnome/ gnome-docu/ gdp/ contrib/ user_guide/GNOMESSUG.pdf
> 
> There is also an announcement on the following page: 
> 
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/
> 
> As well as being a preview of what we intend to publish, we would also
> like to  
> invite community members to look at the User Guide in the light of being
> able to 
> use the material in the community desktop, as online Help for the
> various 
> components. In addition, we welcome all comments and suggestions about 
> developing the book. 
> 
> Before you start reviewing the User Guide, you should read the attached 
> readme.txt file. 
> 
> Pat
> 
> 
>