On 2/28/07 jiho wrote: > Having an official manual distributed with Inkscape would greatly > enhance its dissemination.
You are right: an official manual should be available. I wouldn't like to undermine Tavmjong's effort, however, and I see nothing bad in Kevin's usinginkscape.com. But: a) a user manual should be available without Internet access; b) a user manual should be available in as many languages as possible. c) a user manual has to be written in such a way that it could be used for context sensitive help; d) a user manual browser should have a search function; e) a user manual should be "aware" of existing tutorials. The e) is an issue maker, since our tutorials are SVG files, not just illustrated hypertext. The idea behind SVG is great. But what is the real situation? Do users actually appreciate it? I've heard quite a dozen of times users complaining that opening a tutorial takes too much time and noone ever mentioned how much fun it is to be able to draw right in a tutorial. So, if we want Inkscape's documentation to rock the world, we need to know: 1. Do we have human resources to maintain a good thorough user manual? If we do, what would be the best way to organize this work? 2. Do we have human resources to maintain translations (Cedric's & Kevin's XML file in SVN is about 500 Kbyte large)? If we do, what would be the best way to organize their work? 3. Is it possible to reuse GIMP's approach to context help? 4. What should we use as user manual's browser? My thoughts on some of the above. 1. We do not have such human resources as of now. We have neither one single coordinator of the documentation effort, nor instant contributors. If I am wrong, please stand up high and blame me :) 2 . We _might_ have human resources to provide translation of the manual into _some_ languages. I know that at least German and Brazilian communities are quite active, dunno for others. There is no way a single person can instantly maintain such a huge translation, stay sane and be able to work to pay the bills :) A team of 2-3 people is a minimum. That's what I know from my experience with translation of GIMP's docs. Please share your thoughts. Cheers, Alexandre ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Inkscape-translator mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-translator
