License problem in Ubuntu Desktop Guide (Re: Incorporating

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Sep 7, 2006, at 4:39 AM, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
>
> --- Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> ...
>> (b) people browsing help are looking for answers to questions (a
>>     relative strength of the Ubuntu Desktop Guide), not in "manuals"
>>     or "guides" as such.
>
> True.
> But you also have to actually explain the basics. I mean the stuff 
> that most of us reading this take for granted. Just last week I saw a 
> friend scrolling down a long web page -- to advance by a screen's 
> worth of
> text, he clicked the 'down' scrollbar button repeatedly. I think he 
> had no idea that you could hold it down. The same goes for things like 
> double-clicking to select whole words, or the fact that copy-paste 
> works between applications (examples off the top of my head that I've 
> seen users astounded to learn of). I see a need for a fairly large 
> chunk of the user guide explaining basic GUI concepts like this --

Realistically, I think few people would learn these things from an 
on-screen page or manual even if it existed. People would learn them 
either from other people (like yourself), or from an interactive 
tutorial program like Windows 3 and Mac System 7 used to have.
<http://guidebookgallery.org/tutorials>

> ...
> One of the things I really dislike about Microsoft's new approach to 
> help is that there seems to be no overall table of contents, or list 
> of features. Just lots and lots of "tell me about thingy", which is
> usually the wrong thingy.

 From what I can tell, Microsoft dropped the full table of contents 
because -- for the OS at least -- nobody was using it.
<http://codeproject.com/dotnet/LHChangesUA1.asp#TOC_Index_Search>

> I never seem to be able to get an answer to a question such as "what 
> the heck does this checkbox in that dialog do?"

Traditionally that was the job of the "What's This?" button or menu 
item. As of Windows Vista (and to some extent already in Windows XP), 
such help is supposed to be embedded in the window itself.

> ...
>> That would be very good (dare I say long overdue?), though it would 
>> put distributors under the gun for ensuring those gaps
>> were always filled in. (We saw this in microcosm with yelp's "Try this
>> search at ____" function; it makes much more sense if distributors
>> customize it than if they don't.)
>
> Well, they are gaps that already exist in the GNOME UG. So if they are 
> still there, there is no change.

Fair enough, though they might be more obvious this time.

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/