Hi Janet, Thank you for your insight. Very interesting, I learned from it, and it also reinforced some thigs I had been thinking:
Janet M. Swisher wrote: > Readers have an unfortunate tendency to ignore tables-of-contents, and > might not keep looking all the way to page 5 to get that information. > They might instead conclude "This document doesn't answer my > questions", and start looking around for a more promising document. It took me a long time to realize that people are like that. But I've heard it from so many sources now. From my parents, trying to run a store (users glance at a shelf on their eye level, if what they want isn't there they conclude the store doesn't have it). From website usability books (people don't read all links on a page and select the best one, they just click on the first link that seems like a reasonable choice). And now from you. All three conclude on essentially the same conclusions (plus variations to account for a different medium). > I've observed that a regular, though not frequent, question on the > [email protected] list is something like "Can my > organization(/company/agency) distribute this product to all our users?" > So there definitely are people who need the concept of open source > software explained to them. But I think most individual users who don't > know about OSS also don't care, and don't need to know about it in order > to get up and running with the software. Furthermore, many of those just want a succinct "yes". Or perhaps a one paragraph explanation. > Therefore, I agree with the suggestion to move that information to > appendices, where the interested reader can find it. I agree that the > material is very informative, and not easily gleaned from other sources. > I think the 10% of users who do need that information (I just made that > number up) will find it, read it, and get value from it, even if it is > in an appendix. But as an appendix, it won't interfere with the other > ~90% of readers achieving their goals. > > Regards, > Janet > > -- > Janet Swisher --- Senior Technical Writer > Enthought, Inc. http://www.enthought.com -- Daniel Carrera | I don't want it perfect, Join OOoAuthors today! | I want it Tuesday. http://oooauthors.org |
