Amarok Quick Guide

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 3:26 AM, Willem Ferguson
<willemferguson at zoology.up.ac.za> wrote:
> Dear Amarockers,
>
> The section on 'Starting Amarok' currently contains instruction specific
> to KDE/Kubuntu. If we wish that Amarok becomes an opensource contender
> for software like iTunes, then this section needs to be generic for
> other OSs/user interfaces such as Gnome, Mac as well as Windows.  While
> I understand and respect the emphasis on KDE, the software is not
> intended only for use within the KDE environment and this needs to be
> solidly reflected in the introduction, especially in any section that
> deals with 'Starting Amarok'.

Certainly we will need this in the Handbook. However, for a Quick
Start Guide, I think we need to stick with KDE, as that is what ~90%
our new users will be using. How about if you take charge of the
section about using Amarok outside of KDE, and outside of Linux?
That's important to cover, I think.

> Secondly, the screen shots currently in the userbase are pretty small
> and in may cases illegible. I went to great trouble to optimise the
> screen shots in the original Google doc in terms of size and legibility
> while minimising clutter in the doc. For instance, I inserted some split
> screen shots (two screens shots combined into a single figure) in order
> to use the page width efficiently. For an an introductory user guide, it
> is not useful to have to double-click a screen shot to see it in legible
> format. It is a a user-UNfriendly approach. The screen shots need to be
> prepared in an appropriate size to be immediately read and understood by
> any person who reads the doc. Many users are likely to be newbies, not
> neccesarily conversant with KDE. User friendliness of the Quick Guide is
> crucial for encouraging a broad acceptance of Amarok.

Please upload new images if you see some which need replacing -- and
place your next to, above or below the present one. We'll compare, and
use what is the clearest.

As for size -- thumbnails. Full size images would overwhelm the text.

> Thirdly, versioning needs to implemented on the document being developed
> on the Quick Guide in the UserBase. I suggest a versioning convention
> that follows the current version of Amarok. This will reduce confusion
> later when later versions of Amarok is released and that would need to
> be supported by a Quick Guide.
>
> Kind regards,
> Willem Ferguson

I don't know much about the versioning, but be assured that it will be
added before final release. We want to stay up-to-date, as you say.

Thanks so much for all your help in getting this Quick Start Guide off
the ground, Willem. We won't make the mistake of using Google Docs
again, I promise you. I'm very sorry that the upload work has to be
done twice, and I apologize for that. Painful mistake, which I think
we are all learning from.

Valorie
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