Sec: Unclassified RE: Another Unofficial UbuntuGuide?

[Stoffers, Robert LAC]

Hi Christian,

Looks like you've run into one of the main problems of Ubuntuguide.org, although its licensed under an open licence if the maintainer doesn't like your suggestion/you/doesn't care/loses interest then there's not much you can do apart from forking the guide, which in the long run isn't the best thing. Unlike the unofficial guide, the Official Starter Guide (known as the Desktop Starter Guide for Dapper) is a lot more open in nature, anyone can contribute and if myself as the maintainer loses interest then anyone can take over. Also, if I think your idea doesn't belong in the Starter Guide you can bring it up at one of the Docteam meetings for the group to discuss it, although you will find that I am pretty open to any well thought out and doable suggestions.

"2. Basic help first - why do I need to go through 2 menus and have to
scroll down in order to reach the official guide?"

As for your second suggestion, there is also a technical reason behind this. We use Yelp as our help viewer which displays XML documents, under Gnome it is found on this menu. You can also find help by clicking on the red life preserver on the top bar of your Gnome desktop too. Also, the way scrollkeeper is set up we need to have a menu page as the first help page, we discussed the idea of having just the Starter Guide appear but thought it to be unfair to other documents we write.

"3. What do you think is interesting in a one page long version history
on top of the guide???? People need help, not information how this
guide developed. So may I strongly suggest to put that on the end of
the guide - it is the last thing somebody looking for information
wants to see."

There is a one page version of the Starter Guide available on help.ubuntu.com although I'm sure some things such as the preface could be removed from it to make it easier to read. The revision history is stuck at the top of the Starter Guide due to technical reasons, believe me we have been working hard at finding a way to remove it from the top of the guide also. 

"4. Please consider changing the format of the guide - the Unofficial
guide is (well, was) so extremely helpful because it is so easy to
read, all at one glance. The Wiki/Official guide is not easy to read.
Please simply copy the appearance of the Unofficial guide, the newbies
will thank you so much."

When did you last read a book that wasn't broken up into chapters somehow? We kept the amount of chapters to a minimum, with clear descriptions (keywords) on what each is about. It is much easier to find your way around instead of looking through one giant list ala ubuntuguide.org. The only thing we are lacking is proper anchors on help.ubuntu.com, hopefully soon someone (most likely me) will add them to the HTML and linking to it will be the same as the old ubuntuguide.org. 

Also, it is up to Yelp to include a decent search facility, something that is clearly lacking IMO.

"5. Please finally add information on how to get a decent screen
refresh rate on systems where the screen has not been autodetected.
Feel free to copy my how-to or modify it, but put it in the hardware
section or the tipps&tricks section of the guide."

Sure, this could be something that we can add to the Dapper version of the Desktop Starter Guide, feel free to contribute! See http://doc.ubuntu.com for more information.

Regards,

Robert Stoffers




-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-doc-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-doc-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com]On Behalf Of Christian Wolf
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 8:18
To: ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Another Unofficial UbuntuGuide?


Folks,

I followed the discussion around the Unofficial Ubuntuguide because I
wanted the author to add help for users such as me with screens that
are not being detected by Ubuntu. The author seems to be sick so the
project is on hold I understand.

May I tell you my experience with the official dokumentation in the
wiki before I ask to add my tipps for users like me with older
screens:

1. Please fix the certificate problem with the wiki. It keeps asking
for a certificate. That is the first thing that deters newbies - and
they are one of your target group if not your main clientele.

2. Basic help first - why do I need to go through 2 menus and have to
scroll down in order to reach the official guide?

3. What do you think is interesting in a one page long version history
on top of the guide???? People need help, not information how this
guide developed. So may I strongly suggest to put that on the end of
the guide - it is the last thing somebody looking for information
wants to see.

4. Please consider changing the format of the guide - the Unofficial
guide is (well, was) so extremely helpful because it is so easy to
read, all at one glance. The Wiki/Official guide is not easy to read.
Please simply copy the appearance of the Unofficial guide, the newbies
will thank you so much.

5. Please finally add information on how to get a decent screen
refresh rate on systems where the screen has not been autodetected.
Feel free to copy my how-to or modify it, but put it in the hardware
section or the tipps&tricks section of the guide.

http://vale.homelinux.net/wordpress/?p=32

Thank you very much for your time and consideration - please keep in
mind that Ubuntu bug #1 can only be fixed if we take care of the
newbies. You are writing the guide FOR THEM! Try to think like them,
and if you cant because you forgot how it was when you started Linux,
ask one of your mates that still use that evil software.

The current Wiki and all the FAQs and guides and fridges and stuff are
great ideas but are maybe overwhelming for newbies. It is maybe just
too much. the Unofficial Guide kept it easy, kept it simple. That is
what helps most.

Regards,

Christian
--

http://vale.homelinux.net/

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