On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 13:11 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: > Leonardo Fontenelle wrote on 29/10/08 00:50: > > > > http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/infodesign-2.html.en > > > > What's the difference between "introduction" and "getting started"? > >... > > "Getting started" probably is helpful, "Introduction" probably isn't. ;-)
If we're talking about documentation in general, I'd say it depends on what you're writing. "Introduction" should be used to introduce concepts and terminology. This is, I suspect, most useful in developer documentation. But it could be useful as a subsection title for more complex applications. For instance, a section on charting for a spreadsheet manual might be served well by an introduction. Now, if we're talking about the first section of a typical application help manual, then we definitely want "Getting Started". And not just the title. A "Getting Started" section should be a real hands-on tutorial to how to use the application. If you have a "Getting Started" section that reads like the following, you've done something wrong. Beanstalk is an application for collecting and counting magic beans. Beanstalk is free software under the GPL. Beanstalk uses [boring list of libraries users really do not care about]. Beanstalk can be used to [list of things you can do, without telling you how to do any of them]. In the future, [OK, stop. Documentation is not the right place for your roadmap. Ever. Seriously.] -- Shaun _______________________________________________ gnome-doc-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
