Re: About GNOME / return / duck related question

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Dec 1, 2006, at 11:54 AM, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> ...
> > A thought has been rattling around my head for a while. Many GNOME app
> > manuals are in fact contained in the user guide. It's not quite clear
> > which apps should have their own standalone manual, and which should 
> > be in the user guide.
>
> I agree, it's confusing for us and for users. I considered moving more 
> applets into the User Guide, but it's such a monster already, and 
> doesn't seem worth the effort.
> ...

There are some things that most people will not recognize as being 
distinct "applications", and which should therefore have their help 
combined into a general "&operatingsystem; Help". These include gdm, 
gnome-panel, Metacity, Nautilus, gnome-screensaver, and the various 
Preferences and Administration tools.

> > With Mallard, can we not have each app have it's own manual (thus 
> > simplifying calling the docs from the app, and letting the app be 
> > built independently of GNOME), and compose the user guide by 
> > including content from each app, and adding extra info if necessary. 
> > Something along these lines could be nice and modular, making things 
> > much more clear, whereas things currently seem a bit of a mess. 
> > Perhaps this is the plan already ?
>
> That's probably the plan. Or it should be. The reverse also true: I'd 
> like things like 'Opening a file' and 'Using the clipboard' to be 
> written in the user guide, and then appear as topics in application 
> manuals.
> ...

If I was having trouble opening an Excel spreadsheet in Gnumeric, and I 
didn't yet know that Gnumeric didn't offer any help on opening Excel 
spreadsheets specifically, I would get a bit annoyed if I read through 
Gnumeric's "Opening a file" help, only to realize that it was 
word-for-word the same as the "Opening a file" section in almost every 
other application.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/