> > Could you elaborate a bit? On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 11:15 -0500, Dan Saint-Andre wrote: > I've been making "documentation" for decades. In days of olde, > documentation has several distinct parts:
Oh whou, thanks for explaining this - I really appreciate it and it provides a "We've come a long way, baby" feeling. > "Reference Manual" -- list every button and option and input with > explanation of what behavior they caused in the > creation of results; show every output with explanation of what they > mean and what happened to create that output That sounds like the Evolution manual that was shipped until version <= 3.0, in the style of "Click Save to save": Something I would not call "Help" without feeling slightly ashamed. > "Theory of Operation" > "Operator's Manual" > "User's Guide" -- a subset of the Operator's Manual that explained how > desktop workstation folks could obtain results. > If well written, these guides might start with "If you want these > results ..." and explain how to feed data and options to > cause those results to happen. In addition, there might be sections > that begin "If you have this data ..." and explain > all of the results one might generate with that information as a > starting point. Both perspectives are important. > As the word "user" implies, these were intended for folks use in years > after the data center managed processing. For the Evolution user documentation for version >= 3.2 your description of "User's Guide" seems to fit the most. > "Maintenance Manual" > I know this is off the topic of "Evolution -- the email client" but I > continue to be frustrated by the state of what > passes for "documentation" for what could be a pretty decent > application suite. Oh, to me this is ontopic and I'm interested in feedback. If you have specific issues with the user help for version 3.2 or newer (online at http://library.gnome.org/users/evolution/3.3 ) I am happy to look into them if you could elaborate. andre -- mailto:[email protected] | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list [email protected] To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
