Simply put Martin, we can't please everyone. sorry, there's bound to be people visiting the site trying to learn about the basics, the goal of this site is to keep it basic I prefer to use the term KISS (Keep it simple stupid) for stupid people like me, We need to dumb it down just enough to draw people in to use it and try it. as for the different unix systems, on the downloads page would you like us to list it by country that the developer is in? or by the specific hardware it uses or what? because there are 1000's of unix flavors listed here http://lwn.net/Distributions/ and if we listed all the distributions, I'm sure we'd be leaving a few out. However I do agree with your point, maybe we should post a link a page located in our docs showing how to install inkscape on the various flavors? unfortunately with all advertising you can't list everything... does 31 flavors show you 31 flavors on their sign? no that would be too crowded. However I do have a task for you if you're Interested Martin we would love to have you head up the documentation page for this as soon as we complete the standards for the docs... would you be interested? Sorry if this offends, it's not meant to be.... but when we're complaining over "small fish" when we should be concerned about the bigger fish overall such as finishing the site as a whole and making it flow in general.... but as always feedback is great.... and we'll defiantly take your input into consideration, just realize it is just that all input will be taken into consideration and weighed, and as always we can't please everyone so not everything everyone wants will be on the website otherwise it will end up a giant mess like it currently is... regards, Ian On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Chris Morgan <chris.morganiser@...400...>wrote:
On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On Wed, 2010-12-29 at 15:47 -0800, Leo Jackson wrote:
You're right about the need for more information on how to source Inkscape; I don't believe you're at all right about starting with the text on the front page. What it says is correct. The modifications only need to take place on the download page.
This is terrible! what you ask is that user count be taken as more important than community. Which is sad.
The point of the front page of the website is to focus on what will help people - in particular new users - the most. The fact that some people may like Linux more than Windows shouldn't come into it at all; it should be almost purely marketing. And I think the largest sample set of the people who we are appealing to are using Windows. (I'd like usage statistics for Inkscape and the website, but we don't have them, so this is merely belief; I'm not certain of the actual facts.) I don't care whether Linux may be seen as "community". When something is put as "Windows, Mac OS X and Linux" I see that as the normal way of putting it. "Linux, Windows and Mac OS X" would grab attention - in most people in a negative way. Ordering based on market share is simply the sensible way to do it.
The problem with the rest of your disagreement is that while they may be what everyone thinks, it's horrible marketing and it's hurting free software adoption. There just isn't any thought in how to present or help with adoption so we end up hurting our users with it.
How is it horrible marketing? How does it hurt free software adoption? My argument was that it would be likely to *detract* from Inkscape, and make people *less* likely to do it. Simply because Linux is first won't make people want to try Linux, whereas having Linux first may well make Windows users (maybe some OS X users too) *not* try Inkscape.
Ubuntu isn't recognized as Linux by a significant set of Ubuntu users.
It's only recognized as Linux by Linux recognizing people. you may be under the misunderstanding that Linux is recognised because you yourself recognise it. :-(
The simple fact is that whether Ubuntu is recognised as Linux or not, it would be inaccurate and misleading to mention it by itself (to say nothing of reducing the literary value of the sentence significantly), while putting "GNU/Linux Free Desktops" in that sentence is simply cloying (and wouldn't help with the issue anyway - it would just confuse most people). If we mention operating systems in there at all (which I think we should), "Windows, Mac OS X and Linux" is, I believe, approximately the only decent way of putting it.
-- Chris
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