Mr. East, I feel your pain. I have worked in Information Development for over 15 years. I used to work for IBM, going from simple technical hardware guides to developing the scenario guide for WebSphere 5.0. I've gone from IBM's docbook to SGML to DITA. Trying to customize documentation to suit one's needs is still a pain point. Sometimes I feel I can build a server from scratch much easier than collating five authors' comments into one document. That being said, I am a new convert to Ubuntu. Fiesty piqued my interest and after testing it, I have become a quiet evangelist. However, I feel Ubuntu is close to the perfect YMAD (Your Mom and Dad) OS concept but not close enough. So in any way I can, I want to help make Ubuntu the best it can be. I haven't dug deep enough to see the Gnome material in raw docbook format to fully understand and offer a solution at this time. However, I can make some observations: 1) Less linking to the Internet-based wiki. If you are just trying Ubuntu out, you may not be able to get connected to Ethernet or wi-fi. It is kind of saying, please email the helpdesk if you think the network is down. A quick, concise, local [machine] guide should be available as the home page of Firefox start up in Ubuntu. 2) Need a easier transition from Windows. Mr. Shuttleworth is taking the high road of championing Ubuntu or nothing as the machine OS. He needs to take that position as leader of Canonical because dual-boot means having the competition living in the same house and worrying over legacy issues that would force a user to restart in Windows instead of always in Ubuntu. However, at the ground level, we need to think of just such a scenario. The targets of weaning Windows users are both the YMADS and the Gamers. Business, while the lucrative side of desktop OS, needs a whole different paradigm for implementation. But like the private side, there are only two different camps to deal with: small, and medium/large businesses. Small businesses can be treated like the private, home use where Ubuntu Just Works(tm) and medium/large businesses need the safety of rigorous validation and image [ISO] security. I feel transition in the large corporate environment would be of the cold turkey environment where laptop MS images are swapped out completely for Ubuntu and there would be no dual boot. But getting back to the point is that the hearts and minds Ubuntu has to win over works best by offering transition. The documentation and UI process for installing Ubuntu as a second OS has to be better than 7.04 . It is very close but not yet there. The solution is to have a more graphical and understandable installation UI. Also, a PDF, clearly marked on the Ubuntu site and in the Windows UI (using the Live CD while in Windows), is recommended. The PDF would be something of a quick guide that shows in screen shots what the installation process goes through and in the beginning, helps the installation process by asking the user to record installation information found in Windows. (Go *here* and write down the information where it tells you how much RAM you have, what is the name of your video card, etc.) By involving Windows users in Windows-based information gathering and tidying up (like defragmentation), it will prepare the user and make them feel comfortable that there will be a safety net in all this. Yes, we want them to eventually forget all about Windows and be a single OS booting family but we have to realistically draw the very large MS based person away from the OS in a manner that reassures the user. 3) Cleanly overlay Ubuntu on Debian and Gnome. In the YMAD world, these folks want to believe in the Just Works philosophy of getting on the Internet, reading email, and using media like DVDs, camera images, and basic office documents in a secure yet simple way. Most, if not all will not use an OS when they are confronted with actually creating code to fix or completing a task. They want the OS to either run an update or repair natively or show them in a simple, easy to understand UI how to do it for themselves. In the same way, if we have missing, erroneous, or conflicting documentation, then this group will go back to Windows. We also need to take the fanboy style out of the equation for this beginners user group. The simple user does not need to have "do it yourself, gramps, or just go back to Windows, loser" flung in their face when they venture as far as to asking a question on a forum. They took a lot of initiative to just ask the question. Having a bad community experience will push them back into Windows forever. Also, if the documentation is not clear for their level, then they will go back too. How to overlay cleanly? Docbook tagging seems to be the easiest solution. Like I said before, I have not dug deep enough to make a viable and educated guess has to how it would work. But I do believe a centralized tagging schema could build a better docbook. Where Ubuntu deviates from Debian and Gnome, the building process should recognize the deviations and overwrite the base level documentation. Also tagging the information according to level of expertise would help. At build time, it will not cost that much more space in the CD (unless further restricted by the overall package size requirements of 700MB) to build separate guides for MS Family transition, MS power user, and Linux user. I envision an Ubuntu future where there is a guide for weening a family user off of Windows completely. Perhaps as soon as they decide they want a new computer and want to migrate their own Ubuntu environment to the new system. I hope I haven't bored anyone to tears or written something overly long here but I want to let people know that I want to help and I am looking for spots that can use my expertise most effectively. Best regards, Thom Wiley (aka Monkeyboythom) <div>On 7/5/07, <a href="mailto:ubuntu-doc-request@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-doc-request@lists.ubuntu.com </a> <<a href="mailto:ubuntu-doc-request@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-doc-request@lists.ubuntu.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Today's Topics: 1. Help with integrating Gnome docs into Ubuntu (Matthew East) Hi there, To: Gnome doc lists Cc: Ubuntu Gnome maintainers, Ubuntu doc list I'm looking for some advice. In Ubuntu, during the last release we incorporated the Gnome user guide into the structure of our documentation. This has the advantage that we don't have to worry about recreating the wheel and can use the excellent material from upstream. The basic problem we are having though is that Ubuntu customises quite a lot of Gnome, and as a result the Gnome documentation is wrong, and we need to correct it.</blockquote><div> <<snip>> </div> </div>