Re: GNOME Documentation

[Phil Bull <philbull gmail com>]

Hi Peter,

On Tue, 2010-12-21 at 17:07 +0000, Peter Davis wrote:
> These are a couple of the thoughts that have occurred to me while
> using GNOME or reading your work, for which I thank you.  I hope you
> may find them helpful:

Great, thanks for the feedback!

> Several times, well before Desktop User Guide / Using the Panels /
> Managing Panels /  Moving a Panel, as in Desktop User Guide / Desktop 
> Overview / Windows / Giving Focus to a Window and Desktop Overview /
> Using the Panels, the advice refers to the panels as being at the top
> and bottom, and positions on them follow from that.  If there is no
> other way of distinguishing between the panels, perhaps another note
> should be added to warn of the possibility that the positions might
> not be as described, as implied by the reference to defaults in Using
> the Panels / Introduction.

It's difficult to work around user customisations in a robust way. We
could mention somewhere that the panels may have been moved around, but
there's no guarantee that the reader will see that passage and take in
its implications before getting to the other stuff.

Users tend to dip in and out of the help (rather than read it all the
way through), so relying on them having read previous information isn't
a good idea in general. This is why we're moving to topic-based help,
where the help files will be made up of a collection of self-contained
topics.

> At the bottom of Desktop User Guide / Basic Skills is a navigation
> link to Basic Skills, which is where you are, so clicking it achieves 
> nothing.  The same is true of Mouse Skills, Buttons below Mouse Button
> Conventions, Global Shortcut Keys, Introduction below all of Desktop 
> Overview / Introduction, Using the Panels / Introduction and Desktop
> User Guide / Working with Files / Introduction, Types of Windows,
> Switching Between Workspaces, Common Features, Starting a Session,
> Logging in to GNOME, Startup Programs Tab, Top Edge Panel, Moving a
> Panel, Interacting With Panel Objects, Adding a Launcher to a Panel,
> Force Quit Button, To Open and Close a Drawer, Window Selector Applet,
> Applications Menu, File Manager Functionality, Executing the Default
> Action, Saving Searches and so on.

I think this is just an artefact of the way the documents are processed
in the help viewer. I don't think it's confusing enough to warrant a
fix.

> Also, I can switch between workspaces by moving my mouse 
> cursor to the the top left corner of my screen, so that could
> presumably be added to your list.

I'm not aware of that being a default behaviour. Do you have some other
window manager enabled, perhaps Compiz? Or maybe I've missed a setting
which allows hot corners.

> I'd have found it helpful to be told where to find the Sessions
> preference tool.

As I mentioned above, the GNOME User Guide is now obsolete. We're
working on the new, topic-oriented Desktop Help, which will cover GNOME
3.0. A lot of the problems you mentioned (panel location etc.) won't be
a problem there, I hope!

Thanks very much for your feedback,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull
Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm