On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 05:36 -0800, Tommy Reynolds wrote:
Uttered "Paul W. Frields" <stickster(a)gmail.com>,
spake thus:
> On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 12:52 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > Vladimir Kosovac wrote:
> > > I have couple of sandboxed pages ready for your review/input at:
> > >
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/wiki/VladimirKosovac/StylingPage/WorkPage
> > For example, if I am doing web services administration, I would expect
> > to learn about system-config-httpd in that section along with the Apache
> > configuration details.
> That's an excellent point Rahul makes -- that our documentation should
> be largely task-based. Relevant material should be lumped together
> where possible and logical.
Agree emphatically.
What I detest is "feature-oriented" documentation that mostly walks
around the buttons and menus of a GUI, or is an elaborated bullet
list of each separate feature (even if the elaboration runs to pages
or chapters). I'm as guilty as anyone about doing this ("My name
is Tommy. Chorus: Hi, Tommy!") but I'm recovering ;-)
Every button / menu / feature / asset was designed into the program to
provide a service, with a reason behind that decision. Document the
problem solved by the feature, et. al., and not the implementation.
Answer the question of "how do I foo", not the question "what do all
these buttons mean?"; then the "what are all these dials and switches"
question becomes moot.
So, instead of this:
o The FILE menu has an EXIT button.
I'd prefer to see:
o When you are finished, click the FILE/EXIT button to
save all your work and to gracefully terminate the
program.
Just my $0.02e+27, YMMV.
Yessirree! To harp on something (yet again), note how important this
makes defining your audience and their core knowledge, skills, and
abilities: Without that thatinformation, you can't tell what your
audience can't do without in terms of instruction.
--
Paul W. Frields, RHCE
http://paul.frields.org/
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