John & Melonie Curwood wrote:

Hi all,

I've just been working on the FM Inkscape manual (the chapter on working with files), and under the Save Dialog section where there is talk about file formats that can be used, I noticed that alot of them weren't available on the dropdown list in the save file dialog. I was just wondering why is that? as it could be quite confusing especially if after reading the manual you wanted to save a drawing as an illustrator SVG so it could be edited in Adobe Illustrator, but when you go to the actual save dialog in Inkscape there isn't an option for Illustrator SVG.

Alexandre would probably answer this better, but I believe that some formats require certain other software to be present (either at compile time or runtime, not sure). Is that even close to correct? If that's the case, a note will need to be made here.

Which formats in particular are missing?

Also I've observed that when a 'NOTE' has been added to a chapter sometimes they are just plain text on a new paragraph while other times they have had a border around the paragraph with a pale pink background. I'm quite happy to give all notes a border and background but I guess we need to set a standard so that we don't have mixed uses and inconsistencies throughout the document.

Yeah, as I mentioned before we're still in limbo about this type of formatting. Adam didn't think it was good to have for most of the manuals, and I don't think he could enable it just for ours either. I'll try to get in touch with him again about it. For now, just do plain text - unless you think something like italics would be good. Make a few suggestions, we'll discuss them.

Another thing I've seen is a number of comments specifically aimed at Linux users and I think having a set style for any OS specific content would be a good Idea.

Probably a good idea. Actually, anything that is aimed at an OS should be 1. necessary, 2. well defined, 3. necessary. What did you notice in particular? And what formatting were you considering? (Maybe it should be basically the same as a note)

I hope this doesn't sound like a moan because it's not, but while editing the manual I have noticed a number of inconsistencies whose use hasen't been mentioned in the Writing Guidlines so Before changing all the formatting throughout the document I thought it would be a good idea to establish guidlines for these situations. And it would be great if anyone else has noticed any other situations where we need to establish style guidlines that they mention it and we can establish consistent styles for each of these situations.

Exactly. You're not complaining, especially if you're working to improve it. These are all things I've noticed and want to fix, just need more time/people. You're the people part of that ;)

I'd recommend making actual suggestions about any styling ideas you have, but trying to keep them as consistent as possible with the content so that too many changes aren't necessary. Then, as soon as we agree on something, it should be recorded in the "Writing Conventions".

JF