Helping your documentation effort.

[Matthew East]

Dear Richard,

I'm cc:ing you to this email because I think you're not subscribed to
the mailing list.

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 17:23 +0200, Richard wrote:

> You see, you are all geeks without the understanding of what it feels
> like to be an "average user". eg. Loading Java as per the installed
> user's guide. I have just spent a fruitless half hour trying to get the
> terminal to say I have found the right directory. No joy, yet you assume
> we all know this.

We definitely understand the need to make instructions understandable.
In the example you chose, if you check the version of the guide which is
available for Ubuntu 6.06, you'll see that installing a java plugin for
Firefox does not require the terminal. If you want to install a full
java environment, you'll need the terminal, but to be honest, if you
need a full programming development environment, you already know how to
use the terminal. For installing a flash plugin, you'll need to open a
terminal, but only to copy and paste one command. Sadly, this is out of
our hands: the problem is that the licensing of the flashplayer
necessitates this. As for basic terminal skills, these are now detailed
in the first chapter of the guide "Getting Started".

We think that large usability strides have been made for the next
version of Ubuntu. As more users like yourself (and with even less
knowledge) join Ubuntu, it will become more and more important to focus
on this aspect, and we definitely intend to do so.

> With that all said, I have to say I am fully behind the Ubuntu efforts
> and hope to make the experience of other newcomers like me, smoother and
> happier.
> 
> May I help by writing for you from the standpoint of a complete newbie?
> No prior knowledge assumed. Or "Ubuntu for Blondes".

You can certainly help. You don't need to learn our tools in order to
contribute. If you have a look at the recent versions of the guides, and
see how you think they fare from a usability point of view, you can give
feedback (the more specific, the better) by writing to the mailing list.
Also, if you have some suggestions for the text itself, include that in
your emails.

For future releases, we will be brainstorming about our aims and how to
make Ubuntu help as effective as possible. You are definitely welcome to
contribute to that thinking, which is likely to carry on via the mailing
list after Ubuntu 6.06 is release (or perhaps even earlier).

> Hope I haven't taken up too much of your time.

Course not!

Matt
-- 
mdke at ubuntu.com
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/attachments/20060408/e5070412/attachment.pgp>