[kde-doc-english]Suggestion - Konqueror

[Éric Bischoff]

On Wednesday 21 August 2002 21:26, Pam R wrote:
> Hi Éric
>
> I'm in the middle of updating the Konqueror handbook, and your email is a
> useful input - thank you.

Feel welcome. I'm pleased if it is useful.

> But, thinking aloud as it were, the Q&A section of the handbook was based
> largely on the  http://www.konqueror.org FAQ, when it was relatively small.
> I could update it to include the new stuff from the FAQ but that has grown
> considerably over the last year which would make for a rather large Q&A
> section (and a lot more work for the translators). Perhaps it would be
> better just to include a link to http://www.konqueror.org/faq.html .That
> way it would also be more up to date.

Just my personal opinion :

I tend to think that local documentation is useful, because:

a) Not everyone has access to the Internet. Perharps people wanting to read 
the doc an on a laptop, or on a machine that has no Internet access. Remember 
that Konqueror is not only a web browser but also KDE's local file manager so 
it's still a core component to such people.

b) Perharps things are not working as they should, and perharps people want to 
look at the FAQ precisely to resolve their problem. How can they browse the 
Konqueror documentation online if Konqueror is not working? Chicken and egg 
problem.

c) Online documentation might be _too much_ up to date and not match the 
version of the software that they have on their local machine.

These are the reasons why we don't just simply put every KDE documentation 
online, and nothing on people's hard disks.

Having said that, it's true that, as a documentation translator, I have no 
pecular pleasure in translating kilometers of documentation just for marginal 
issues.

Could we head for a mixed solution? For example, have the most useful 
questions addressed in konqueror's DocBook documentation, and give a pointer 
for additional questions ?

> And I deliberately didn't include the Konqueror + Java HOWTO hints in the
> Handbook because again they are fairly large and I thought that they would
> be of relatively limited use - most KDE users I think will have it
> installed as part of a distro and the work of incorporating Java would have
> been done by the distro packagers. But I did include a link to
> http://www.konqueror.org/konq-java.html, which has the advantage that as
> time passes it may well be more up to date than anything in the Handbook.
>
> Just my 0.02euro though, does anyone else have thoughts about this?

Me ;-).

I think that what you say makes sense, but I would vote for selecting the FAQ 
items that remain in the DocBook file, and add a pointer for more items. The 
criteria to select questions that should not be inside that you describe for 
the Java installation case seem very valuable.

What we could also do is just do things like :
Q: I have problems installing java
A: See http://www.konqueror.org/konq-java.html for a complete discussion about 
java installation problems

It's just my 0.02 pounds suggestions, of course ;-).

BTW, what do you think about what I've said about adding a generic 
introduction to konqueror? Like the "konqueror as a web browser / konqueror 
as a file manager / konqueror, a very configurable program / konqueror, an 
universal viewer" stuff that lies on the konqueror web site ?

-- 
Éric Bischoff