Bryce Harrington wrote:

I've thought about this myself quite a bit, and also would like to see it have higher visibility.

When the tutorials are available in other formats they will get noticed. The search engines will index the HTML. That alone will make the information much easier to find. And multiple formats will also make them easier to use.

Aaron Spike

Current status:

Advanced and Calligraphy (English) are up:

http://inkscape.org/doc/advanced/tutorial-advanced.html http://inkscape.org/doc/calligraphy/tutorial-calligraphy.html

While working on the conversion, I updated and edited all tutorials that I authored.

There's also a first translated tutorial in DocBook, Basic in Spanish:

http://inkscape.org/doc/basic/tutorial-basic-es.html

thanks to Jeffrey Steve Borbon Sanabria. All these are also uploaded to Inkscape CVS in SVG.

I wrote a section on how to translate tutorials:

http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TranslationInformation

Please read it if you want to translate some tutorials or convert existing translations to DocBook, and write me if you have any questions.

Matiphas: your French ones in the patch tracker are SVG, can you please DocBookify them?

Thanks everyone!

Matiphas: your French ones in the patch tracker are SVG, can you please DocBookify them?

ok, no problem. What to do first in your opinion : finish translating the others or convert existing to docbook ?

BTW : is there an estimated date of 0.42 ? I'm wondering if I'll have time enough to finish this before next release...

Regards,

Matiphas

For even us non-graphics professionals, the tutorials were exactly where we first looked, under Help. So I would not say they are hidden. One thing missing though is an index or table of contents for which tutorial to go to. ie Where do I find out how to draw a polygon? I really don't think some startup dialog is needed - it is pretty standard for users to look under Help. However, you might also want to add a link to the wiki page under Help. The wiki page is awesome - so much great information there. The best of any open source project I have seen. John

On Saturday 23 April 2005 15:26, Bryce Harrington wrote:

On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 09:16:03PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:

...

John Cliff wrote:

...

...

In Help the whole time. Imagine that. I'm so accustomed to useless Help sections that I never looked there. Thank you.

Kinda tragic how often we hear that...

I've always felt that the tutorials are a little bit tucked away in the Help menu. As Edward said, most Help menus are a pile of rubbish. Can something be done to draw more attention to it? Maybe a dialog that says about it on the first start up... (Although people would probably have objections to that due to usability.)

I've thought about this myself quite a bit, and also would like to see it have higher visibility.

I've thought about ideas like having a default svg pop up on first use, that points out the tutorials and such.

However, even if the user doesn't notice the tutorials, Inkscape is still pretty straightforward to learn. We've got mentions of the tutorials in a variety of places, so I'm sure most dedicated users will eventually run across them. Also, even though in other apps Help is not helpful, I think us putting genuinely useful things in there will spur others to make sure good stuff is in their Help menus.

Bryce

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On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 11:41:04PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:

...

I've thought about ideas like having a default svg pop up on first use, that points out the tutorials and such.

I think this is a Very Good Idea, myself. It come up instead of the default blank page, and be like a "Getting started page" -- something like this:

[suggested page content]

What does the list think of such a page?

Suggested implementation is to have the SVG file saved as share/templates/default.svg. (If this implementation isn't considered appropriate, then see file.cpp:sp_file_new_default for what code should be changed.)

It should include prominent instructions how to make a blank document be the default. Currently there is no good way for people without write access to the directory where inkscape was installed. One way of providing a good way is for the places in file.cpp and interface.cpp that consult INKSCAPE_TEMPLATESDIR to consult ~/.inkscape/templates as well. See dialogs/swatches.cpp:loadEmUp for some code to copy. To make it easier still, there could be a new entry in the file menu equivalent to `save as ~/.inkscape/templates/default.svg'. Don't let the coding work of this paragraph put you off: the initial version of the document could have text from this pararagraph as part of the instructions :) .

Ideally, the document should be written in docbook format for subsequent conversion to SVG: see the thread on tutorials conversion. (Of course, this shouldn't stop people from using plain text or SVG format as starting points for the content, working from Jonathan's suggested text.)

pjrm.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 10:23:50PM -0600, John Taber wrote:

I'm trying to write a wiki article for users on how to contribute to documentation (using doc book and the wiki). Immediately I got several ideas for the wiki and then also realized I'm not even sure where to add a wiki page since the main page is read-only (I can understand why, I just don't know where to add some new pages, especially pages that might need some helpful corrections by others).

Hmm, the wiki main page shouldn't be read-only. I tested it with a minor edit and it worked fine. How are you finding that it's read-only?

Also some new Wiki ideas: Add a fourth column to the top headlined "Beginners" (remember it's beginners that need documentation and how-tos the most). Under beginners there could be a "Tutorials" page with links to tutorials from users. Another page titled "How-Tos" and on that page start some how-tos on simple things like "How-To Draw An Icon", "How-To do an animated cartoon".... Maybe how-tos should be short - otherwise make them tutorials. Another page "Tips & Tricks" - here maybe info on printing, using potrace etc. And I thought I could add my article page here on "Add Hot SVG Graphics to your Web Site" which talks about why svg, adding a svg image to html, and what browsers support SVG, etc. I also thought under the non-coders section to add a page on "Trade Shows" - how volunteers can help out that way. Do any of these sound useful? Where is the best place to create these new pages? John

Yup, the wiki exists to add whatever you think is appropriate. Those all sound like great ideas.

Btw, the Wiki could probably use some spring cleaning. There's built up some old cruft that's probably no longer relevant. If anyone feels like doing some tidying, that'd be great.

Bryce