I need to look this over today... ...but my thoughts on Jean's comments are:
(1) We could lose the screenshots, but they do "charm" some readers. However, with the formatting at 1/2 page they do seem less worthwhile. (2 & 3) Like I said earlier we could move the history/project and OpenSource/license sections to appendices. Both of these topics are not covered, and the information is NOT easily found (in one location) on the OOo website. There are some readers, no doubt, that will want to read this information, especially if they need to convince others that OOo is viable, reliable, compatible and safe to use. These sections should be embellished a bit, though. Believe it or not I tried to keep them down to a minimum amount of text. And Iain's first review of the chapter convinced me to pare down the text for better readability as it applied to an intro chapter. Presenting the licensing as a FAQ section would be very good for non-technical users. I agree on this as long as it is prefaced with a little text as a general intro. I do think that many users will want to know: 1 - What is OOo (both the project and software) 2 - Why is OOo different (or why should I switch from the competition)? 3 - Why is it free, and what does free mean, exactly? 4 - Is OOo viable, reliable and safe to use in my organization? 5 - How does OOo compare to the competition? ...and these should be minimally (but sufficiently) addressed in the chapter. If there are appendices that provide this information then they can be referenced in the chapter as needed and you have kept the text short and easy to follow for the reader. I have looked over several commercial software manuals and they all answer questions 1,2,4 and 5 in several paragraphs within the first few pages of the manual. This is done as an introduction to the product and in these case appendices are rare. Even the third-party books on PHP, MySQL and Python I have do this. ***This is our intro to OOo and it needs to be contain sufficient information (for all) and be readable (by all). A compromise is definitely needed here... > on open source to an appendix in the book On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 17:12 -0800, Jean Hollis Weber wrote: > Iain Roberts wrote: > >Reviewed and uploaded. Looking good! > > Good edits, Iain. Thanks! > > Opinions, please: > > (1) Do you think we should keep the little illustrations in the "What does > OOo include?" section. They don't add any information -- only a bit of eye > candy -- and they do take up space. Also, the printed edition of this book > is probably going to be on 1/2 size pages, so these illustrations will be > quite small. > > I'm still considering moving the "short history" section and the info > on open source to an appendix in the book, instead of keeping them in this > chapter. What do you think? > > (3) The licensing info could become one of the FAQs, instead of having its > own section. What do you think? > > Others are welcome to comment on these questions, too! > > Jean > -- Regards, Rick Barnes www.nostabo.net ******************************************************************* PRIVILEGED - PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL This electronic mail is solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information which is confidential or privileged. If you receive this electronic mail in error, please delete it from your system immediately and notify the sender by electronic mail or using any of the contact details noted herein. This e-mail sent via Evolution 2.0.4 running on a Linux 2.6.11 kernel.
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