On Thursday 24 May 2001 20:12, you wrote:
> I don't have the energy to respond to each piece of the message. Basically,
> though, it's a neat idea but I really don't know if it'll work in practice.
I can say right now, I'm not *absolutely* certain of it at this point either.
Although, what I do see of both the docs and LyX itself suggests that it is
possible, imo.
> There are some things you need in the advanced docs that have no parallel
> at all in the simple docs. And I think it would be very restrictive to have
I think I did address this issue:
Obviously, the paralleling of the structures between manuals doesn't carry
all the way through the documentation. �Each document brings in new and
additional information that doesn't have parallel's in it's predecessor. �
But, that can be handled by breaking the documents into parts. �By grouping
the chapters and sections that do have parallel's in one part of each
document, and cross referencing to the sections that don't parallel, I think
we can provide the user both linear and non-linear paths for reading the
documentation.
In fact, I think the biggest 'disjoint' between any two documents would be
between the User Guide and the "Advanced" Guide. There is a pretty big shift
in the material being presented in these two documents.
> to keep all of the doc section numbers the same. Recall that LyX is
> supposed to allow you to get away from needing to remember section numbers.
While this is true when creating documents, I feel that this is more
dependent on the document(s) being created. The point was more of one that
LyX will properly re-number sections as they are created / moved. Not so
much that the user cannot order their chapters, sections, etc. in a parallel
order.
> You *might* be able to convince me to keep things together on a chapter
> basis, or at least to have the same chapter names for corresponding
> chapters in the different manuals. But really, as long as you have *good*
> chapter and section names, a scan through the table of contents doc should
> help you find approximately where to look.
That's at least a start towards this concept. :) I admit, I initially had
the thought that it should be parallel to the sub-section. However, I backed
off that as I thought more about the differences of they type of information
in the User Guide and the "Advanced" Guide.
> Still, I don't want to discourage you. I think it's great that someone new
> is showing some interest in working on docs, and that people are talking
> about stuff. I'm sure it'll yield benefits.
Thanks. I know this is a big concept to be floating out there...and there
may be some major resistance to it. And, it may turn out that it is an idea
that is great in theory, but impossible to implement. I had to think about
wetther it was worth it to put forth such a large idea in the first place
(after all, I am the new guy here... I don't really want it to appear that I
am trying to 'usurp' control or anything). However I came down to a couple
of reasons to put this out there:
- First: see if we can drop some of the resistance there has been to chosing
to put things in one manual over another for political / personal reasons.
- Second: try to objectify and strengthen the structure of the documentation
a bit more than the current set is. (As I said, I was fine reading through
the Tutorial and User Guide, but I felt the other documents just didn't match
them in terms of having specific and well matched objectives.)
So, for better or worse I decided to post the idea. Hopefully we'll get
something out of it, even if we can't do the whole thing.
--
George J. De Bruin
Check Out 0l0rin's New Age compositions at http://mp3.com/0l0rin
0l0rin's latest recording "Collection" is available now!
-------------------------------------------------------
--
George J. De Bruin
Check Out 0l0rin's New Age compositions at http://mp3.com/0l0rin
0l0rin's latest recording "Collection" is available now!
