Hey, John. No problem. I've been mostly out of commission too, and
will be for another two weeks. But we can certainly discuss during that
time, at least a bit.
John & Melonie Curwood wrote:
Hi Joshua,
Sorry I haven't been in contact for the last couple of weeks, we've had
a lot of trouble getting the phone connected (and hence the internet) in
our new house so I have been out of touch. I am now back up and
running.
Have you had any more thoughts on developing a plan or to-do list for
the manual.
A couple of things I was thinking of were:
1) Divide the the work into
a - what just needs to be proofed
b - what chapters need finishing
c - what new chapters/sections need to be created as a result of new
developments in 0.47
Sounds good. One thing we want to do is make sure that any new stuff is
put into the right place - there's been a lot of reorganizing to make
sense of not-always-rational processes (at least in a human logic :)
And we want to avoid multiplication of chapters with each release,
simply because if we add new stuff every release, it will become an
unmanageable monster.
Part of the reason we have the content that we have and avoided other
content is simply manpower. It's already beyond management for the
manpower we have, so we'll do best to keep it manageable and fill it
with worthy content. So every little detail doesn't need to be
documented, necessarily, at this point, but the important stuff does.
A good place to start from is the release notes. Alexandre is good at
sifting through that, and I've been marking dev emails with new stuff
too, so we should be off to a good start with that. Alexandre?
2) Review all Inkscape window images to ensure the are from 0.47
Definitely. I think it would be beneficial if we could find someone who
would be interested in doing only this who is not so interested in
writing, both for consistency of images and so we can focus on the
content. This is often time-consuming. Any volunteers?
If not, then we only need to focus on the most obviously different ones
first, and get the others if we have time. So, basically, add new
images where needed, then get the rest after the content is in order.
Of course, if you're sick of reading and writing, take some screenshots ;)
3) Once Chapters are complete reviewing them for consistency of
a - language
b - text style
c - image style consistency
Right. I think we have a basic language style *ideal* of precise but
not stiff (hard to accomplish sometimes). I like a relaxed description,
but it's often difficult to do well in a manual.
I'm not really sure what else needs to be done. I would LIKE to
have
chapters that go into how to create this or design than, how to put
together a group of tools and features when making a creation, a bit
like tutorials I guess. However I think the basics need to be completed
first before doing the next step and I don't have time right now to
start creating such chapters.
The idea of the manual is to present an overview of the application. I
think it's important and good to have tutorials, but we've decided to
leave this sort of thing out of the manual (1) because there is a team
that does tutorials right in SVG files, which is perfect (so you can
play around with them) and (2) because, again, the manpower issue.
Let me know what you think as I've not had a deep involvement
before I'm
not sure of the best approach.
Why don't we start with a list of the new features. We should probably
make suggestions as to whether they are to be considered as part of
another chapter or their own separate chapter (and which section they'd
be under if so).
What do you think?
JF