Now this might reveal a question, how tutorials would fit this model. What I'm thinking about is: tutorials should concentrate on practical use of Inkscape only and give only basic theory if any. Most background knowledge should come from the manual. Ideally, whenever a user reads a large chapter and wants to experiment, there should be a tutorial on the subject for him to give a number of advices and illustrations and a lot of place to practice.
If I understand correctly, you mean tutorials should be a place for beginners who are fairly intuitive to get a quick start at working with the tools, or for advanced users to get a quick intro to a tool they don't know. But for people who have no or little clue, or want more in-depth knowledge, we'll give them the tutorial. (For example, if I want to learn the general idea of making stars, look @ tutorials; if I want to know all about polygons and how the different handles work, etc, by someone's explanation, look in the manual/help file).
I think that's a good separation.
As for the currently suggested outline (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/UserManualOutline), there I things I like and things I dislike.
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Basics (already outlined, needs some refinement)
Do you mean you like what we've come up with (basically, a rearrangement of what already exists) for introduction to SVG, Inkscape and User Interface?
This approach has its own weak sides (e.g. where Icon Preview and XML editor should go), feel free to annihilate it :)
Maybe you should keep an "Advanced" section. Then you could put stuff there that wouldn't be needed for "regular use" (of course, "regular use" will be determined by the user and his needs, but we can determine what a general idea of regular use would be for most people, I'd guess :) In addition to the above, stuff like command line use could be put there.
JF