On Mon, Jul 17, 2006 at 01:06:05PM +0200, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> Dear lyxers,
>
> don't know if this is the right list, but anyway: I have tried many
> times to understand the logic behind the various help documents
> (tutorial, user guide, extended features, ... and this list goes
The logic is simple - different documents for different purposes:
Introduction: Short introduction about what LyX is for.
You get this one the first time you run LyX.
It also have a list of all the help documents
and what they are for.
Tutorial: A tutorial that will get you started using LyX.
Such as writing your first document, printing it,
simple editing. This is for beginners.
User's Guide: How to do everything that is supported in LyX.
This is where you go for the details. This is
where you search for stuff.
Extended features: A continuation of the user's guide, with
specialist stuff like latex commands, indexes,
more document classes and more.
Customization: How to customize LyX, such as adding your
own document class, translating LyX itself
into another language and more.
If you do a lot of searching, consider making a document
consisting of User's guide + extended features in one
document. Just paste one into the other,
perhaps as part I and part II. Perhaps with Customization
as part III if you need that one too.
> on....), but now I've had enough -- did you know that branches are
> explained not in extended features, no no no, but in the user's guide
> under "more tools"? Note the subtle difference between "extended" and
> "more", "features" and "tools". This is crazy!
>
Perhaps User's guide and extended features should be merged. I think
the other documents have sufficiently different purposes to justify
being separate. You don't want to hand someone a big document
consisting of all five just to tell them what LyX is - that's what
the "Introduction" is for. . .
> I dare to claim that much of the traffic on this list exists because
> many times somebody wants to RTFM, but -- which one? And not having
> found the answer in the first (of the many) documents, she or he resorts
> to the mailing list, where enough kind and helpful people know all the
> documentation by heart. That's great, but it's also inefficient.
>
Well, five documents isn't that much, and usually it is in the User's
guide. :-) Making a concatenated document for searching shouldn't
be hard though.
> So please consolidate the documentation into one file (or let me do it).
>
> I had to let off some steam, thou shalt not feel offended...
>
Nothing wrong with making a single document, but there are'
times when one don't want everything. Someone who want to
print the user's guide for reference might not want to spend
paper and ink "Customization" for example - few people get into this
part.
Of course, these days LyX have document branches which could be
used to turn on/off the parts one want to see, so a single big
document makes more sense now. The documentation was created
with a more limited LyX, after all.
Helge Hafting
