Benoit St-Pierre wrote:

Hi!

> Here is a first draft of the first page of the new version
> of the tutorial :
> http://www.benoitstpierre.info/scid/tutorial/getting-started.html
> 
> There is no style, no information in the head except the
> title, no navigation, no header, no footer.  All these
> depend upon the way the tutorial is to be incorporated
> into Scid's site, and upon the way the tutorial will
> evolve.

I feel important that the tutorial as such is
self-contained. IMHO one should be able to fetch a ZIP file
with the tutorial, just unpack and read it offline. Say,
while you're on the train or something the like.

> This is only the first page.  The links do not work yet,
> because the two documents refered, i.e. **Installing
> Scid** and **Scid for the Impatient**, are not created
> yet. The only thing that seems to work is the image.
> (Please note the convention to put Scid's version into the
> name of the image : i really like this little trick to
> keep track of the software's version of the snapshot.)

Versioning of images is Ok for me, probably it is more
suitable to use some images/3.6.25/ subdir, ie. a subdir for
each version.

> This page took some time to create, mostly because I had
> to think about the aims of the tutorial.  For example, the
> index will be moved to last pages, as in a book.

Index is a keyword index, I guess. Your idea right now is to
create a linear text? One that should be read from the
begining towards the end?

> More importantly, there shall not be any advanced topics.

Hm. I can imagine in a tutorial that it covers them as
well. In fact I think it even should, how should one learn
about them otherwise? Of course one should start writing the
basics first, but for an html-based document one could think
of the idea of a living document, ie. one that receives
permanent updates and extensions, resulting in the more
advanced topics to be added later on. Also consider more
than one author to balance workload and add expertise in
areas you do not use yourself extensively.

> Without saying in what order the lessons will come out
> (this should emerge while writing), we could settle for
> these types of tasks :
> 
> + Simple things you do with games
> + Searching something, anything
> + Managing databases
> + Studying and playing chess

Looks good for a start. I'd probably split the latter in

   + studying chess
   + playing chess

Simply to get it a bit shorter and less complex. Also I feel
it important that each of these chapters is selfcontained,
if necessary, crosslinking to other parts in the tutorial.
(That's why I asked if you consider a linear or a hypertext
layout.)

I'd also add a short abstract to each chapter which
describes the main topics, and/or a list of keywords. I
consider that many users may have used e.g. ChessBase or
ChessAssistant or whatever and may have an idea. Those
people would like to skip some parts, but probably the wrong
one. E.g. I'd most likely skip the first one (things yo udo
with games) but depending on it's contents it's not wise to
do so. This should clearify in an abstract or list of
keywords.

> That means that there should be less pages than what was
> expected at first.  I don't believe a beginner needs to
> work with EPD files right away 

This might be true, but at least "I have some strange files
called epd. What is that?" should be answered in the
tutorial or it's glossary. I think an extensive glossary
would be a good thing, I can imagine hyperlinking from the
text to the glossary.

> So that means that advanced topics would be dealt with in
> the Help file in Scid.

Then guiding the user to the right topic there is surely
helpful. (See also ... in Scids online help.)

-- 

Kind regards,                /                 War is Peace.
                             |            Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner            |         Ignorance is Strength.
                             |
                             | Theory     : G. Orwell, "1984"
                            /  In practice:   USA, since 2001

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