DUG: Connecting to the Internet page skipped...

[John Babich]

On 4/12/07, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Mr. Babich -- Maybe we should open the DesktopReferenceGuide?  Or a
> better name?  You all can start moving sections around, or each make a
> copy under e.g. JonathanRoberts/DesktopUserGuide and give a vision of
> how things could be.

Mr. Wade -- Despite needing a vacation to recover from my vacation :-), I
will give it some serious thought. The best title for the comprehensive guide
sounds like a good topic for #fedora-docs.

As for the vision, my eyesight's a little cloudy right now. I envision a core
of common topics, such as OpenOffice.org and Firefox, with special
sections on the particulars of GNOME, KDE, etc. A KDE example would
be Konqueror. Of course, the GNOME, KDE and Xfce applications can be
run from any window manager (with the required libraries installed).

I'm open to any ideas on the best way to organize the material. Some
possibilities are:

1. Separate guides for GNOME and KDE. Xfce will be included if time
    permits. Obviously, there will be a great amount of overlap among the
    different guides. I believe these common topics are best handled
    by "includes" in both the wiki and DocBook versions.

2. A single guide which points out which apps are "native" to which
    window manager, but emphasizes that they can mix and match
    apps as desired, again with the required libraries installed.

Either approach should be modular, so that the reader can skip to topics
of interest. Hyperlinks in the wiki version are an obvious solution, but
do not address the DocBook version. Perhaps a good table of contents
is all that is needed.

I agree with the opinion that screenshots are a PITA to maintain. We
need to evaluate the benefit vs. the cost in terms of maintaining the
guide. It certainly complicates the translation process.

Finally, regarding the Fedora 7 default home page, we need to ensure
that the link to the new guide is flexible enough to point the user to the
final version for Fedora 7, while we still have a draft version on the wiki
on which to work for Fedora 8.

Note: The assumption that the end user does not have root access
makes little sense in light of the fact that most users will need to
do updates and want to install new applications. Please correct me
if I am wrong in this regard.

John Babich
Volunteer, Fedora Docs Project