Re: About GNOME / return / duck related question

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Dec 8, 2006, at 5:26 AM, karderio wrote:
> ...
> On Thu, 2006-12-07 at 01:34 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
> > 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.
>
> I'm not sure exactly what would be annoying about seeing the same thing
> twice...

It would waste time, it would make people less willing to seek further 
help, and it would make them grumpy. All of these would make success 
less likely.

> ...
> As it strands, we must (should) explain the "open file" function for
> every app.
> ...

No, really, you shouldn't. :-) Help (on-screen help, that is, not 
manuals) should concentrate on the things that people are likely to 
want help with, because cluttering the help with other stuff makes the 
helpful stuff harder to find. The helpful stuff should not include 
something as simple as opening files, unless there is something badly 
wrong with the filepicker (in which case, fix the filepicker instead!), 
*or* there is something special about opening files in that particular 
application (e.g. "my Excel spreadsheet isn't opening properly, what 
can I do?").

What would be cool is an "&operatingsystem; Basics" tutorial that 
teaches people how to open files in general, along with other basic 
tasks such as using the clipboard and manipulating windows. I think 
that would be the only appropriate place for help on such topics.

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