On 06/05/09 15:32, Per Eriksson wrote:
Hi,
I have looked at the instructions for all the platforms, especially what
level of knowledge is expected from the user. It seems that the
expectations differ some between the platforms. Most instructions
require a degree of understanding of the OS, but some instructions, like
the Gentoo section, more deeply educate the user what the different
emerge commands mean and do.
What should be the expectations of the user reading the documentation?
For me it makes sense that the user doesn't know the entire OS inside
and out, but knows basic usagem and installation/uninstallation of
software.
That's a tough question that Tech Writers struggle with all the time.
Who is the audience? Who are we writing for? Are they experienced
users? Novices? Do we provide a tutorial explaining all the options for
a specific OS? Do we assume they know a little.. a lot?
With Gentoo, I think that explaining how emerge works goes beyond the
scope of the Setup Guide. If this information is necessary, it would be
better to refer to the emerge docs on the Gentoo website... just as you
would do for yum/rpm and RedHat, zypper/YaST and openSUSE, apt/dpkg and
Ubuntu/Debian etc., etc. To contrast this with Windows, you don't go
into depth about how the msi installer works and all the options
available to the msi installer (or do you?)... so why do the same for Linux?
C.
--
Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead
StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany
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