[kde-doc-english]kde guide for Windows users

[Lauri Watts]

On Wednesday 21 May 2003 23.59, Fabrice Mous wrote:
> On Sunday 18 May 2003 00:52, Lauri Watts wrote:
> | On Saturday 17 May 2003 20.13, Fabrice Mous wrote:
> | > These kde-howtos tend to discuss the usage of KMail with
> | > Hotmail/Gotmail and Spamassasin. But also "howto rip an audiocd". Also
> | > I wrote a tutorial about the usage of kgpg and also some other small
> | > stuff.
> | >
> | > This can be found on our humble little dutch website:
> | > http://www.vosberg.be/doc/kde/config.shtml
> | > http://www.vosberg.be/doc/kde/software.shtml
> | >
> | > Is there a way to get this sort of stuff in a central place ... say ...
> | > KDE CVS. When you have all of these howtos combined my guess is that
> | > you have a pretty complete user manual.
> | >
> | > Anyway ... talking is easy, but if there are any plans of doing this
> | > then I will help to write and collect some howtos.
> |
> | Definitely.  It's absolutely in the plans for KHelpcenter to collect up a
> | lot of this kind of very task oriented HOWTO information. If you have CVS
> | checked out, you might like to have a look at kdebase/khelpcenter/DESIGN
> | for the 'big picture' plan.    You'll see that the howto's on your site
> | (I assume, my dutch is nonexistent!) are precisely the thing we had in
> | mind to add.
>
> I read kdebase/khelpcenter/DESIGN ... For me it is a more like a "technical
> paper" which discusses a new structure for khelpcenter. I read in this that
> you want to limit the length of tutorials and that you cleary don't agree
> on that. Well I think so too that tutorials should have the length which is
> needed for clear understanding of the subject ....

Well, it's all academic until we have some content, and yeah, we have 
technical content and 'philosophy' all mixed up in there. :)

I think we are aiming for two types, namely:
1: Single page very 'step by step' how to guides, that cover only a very 
specific task.  Like, 'How do I set up kmail to automatically pgp sign my 
emails' or indeed any of the ones you already have on your site.
2: Longer in depth guides that cover things that involve multiple 
applications.

We already have the application manuals, and to an extent these things are 
both covered, but the application manuals aren't the best solution for these 
things.

For instance, for type 1, it's hard for users to know the correct terms to 
look for the information they need in the Kmail manual.  It's an excellent 
and very comprehensive user manual, but it's also quite large, as is the 
kmail application itself.  Some specific 'how to achieve <some common task>' 
short guides would be an additional resource.  They might even share text 
where possible, to speed up translations.

For type 2, things that involve more than one application, or involve the 
desktop itself, aren't at their best covered in a single application manual.  
For instance, we have the Dot tutorial series, which cover a little bit more 
than a specific task.  There's a very nice DCop tutorial which is sort of 
unknown right now, because there's nowhere to put it - for anyone familiar 
with a scripting language, it's a great doc, but it's got a broad scope (like 
DCOP itself) and isn't bound to a single application.

I think we more or less agreed that we shouldn't mix the two, but both types 
of document are very valuable.  So, keep 'How to' type documents specific and 
detailed, but reasonably short, and keep the broader 'Guide' documents a 
little more general, and it's OK to make them longer.

> | So, if you write them in English, or translate them for me, I'll help you
> | take care of proofreading, mark them up for you if you like, and find
> | them a home in CVS.  The plan for now is to take the current 'Tutorials'
> | folder and make it a 'How To...' folder instead, but there are other GUI
> | ideas under discussion for how to deal with them too.
>
> Okay ... so you do accept tutorials and are there any tutorials already
> avaible within CVS? Anyway ... as soon as we have laid out our multilingual
> approach for our own website/CVS I will submit some translations. 

There aren't right this minute, but I hope to get some time with Frerich in 
the next few days and we'll sort out somewhere in the GUI to display them 
(there's little point putting things in CVS yet that aren't accessible to the 
users) and then I'll find a home for the documents.

> I know where to look and find you  :o)

You sure do :)

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://i18n.kde.org/doc/
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: signature
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-doc-english/attachments/20030522/af7e4d3e/attachment.sig