Re: F-Spot Help files

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 21:06 -0400, Harold Schreckengost wrote:
> This is as far as I can get with the F-Spot help files; anyone else is 
> more than welcome to fill in the "blank" (placeholder) pages I have 
> included; the web uploads, web gallery, and cd export all need to be 
> filled in, as I cannot do these.  Any comments are welcome, as well :)

A few structural/organizational notes:

* For tasks, we generally name the topic as an imperative
using sentence capitalization, e.g. "Import photos".

* There are four subpages under "Tags" that have titles
that are completely dependent on the context of the guide
page. Think of guide pages and possible click paths, not
as definitive parents. Thus, you want all page titles to
stand on their own, e.g. "Create a tag".

* There's also not much need for the section on the "Tags"
guide page. You can have the introductory text with the
links following. It keeps the link trails cleaner.

And more on the content side:

* Write less about F-Spot and more about the user, where
the user is named "you". Instead of "F-Spot allows you to
rate your photos from one to five stars" write "You can
rate your photos from one to five stars". It's shorter,
more direct, and talks about me.

* Instead of one-line sentence-fragment lead paragraphs
for step lists, use a title, phrased as an imperative.
  <p>To search by date:</p>
  <steps>
    ...
  </step>
becomes
  <steps>
    <title>Search by date</title>
    ...
  </steps>


This is a nice start. I like the organization of the
index page. We just need to get some more content in
there and scrutinize the whole thing to make sure it
really addresses user needs.

And in case I haven't said it yet, thanks Harold for
all the hard work you've been putting in lately.

-- 
Shaun McCance
http://syllogist.net/