general stuff about the Mepis Documentation
Posts: 11
Hello!
I'd like to address a few things in MIC, MCC and MUU.
The Help-tab is very useful, but my experience is that users who really need it, do not normally notice that it is there (the tab switch). Therefore I suggest somekind of automation of showing the Help-tab once a section is started. At least in installation the Help-tab could be shown automagically since users are not expected to switch sections while installing (that would abort the installation).
The contents of the Help itself is now quite good. It tells not only what the user should do, but I also teaches some general things about Linux, which I find good. We give information to the user, and information is freedom, right?
Do you folks think that this kind of documentation should speak to the user ("if you want to this and that") or should things be written in general passiv ("if this and that")?
Some sentece structures that annoy me (even though I am not a native English speaker):
"Sorry, could not bla bla"
better: "unable to bla bla", "bla bla failed", "could not bla bla"
"Ok to bla bla?"
better: "May bla bla?" "Are you sure bla bla?"
--
I don't think Mepis needs more Mepis-specific documentation/help than the Help-tabs in MCC/MIC/MUU and the index.html on the CD and the desktop (oh yes, and the boot screens F1-F3 on the LiveCD are also documentation). When these are good enough, we should contribute to KDE's Documentation project or the Linux Documentation Project. (http://i18n.kde.org/doc/, http://www.tldp.org/)
One interesting windows-linux software database we could maybe somehow use can be found at
http://www.skolelinux.no/linux-signpost/showUserMenu.php?locale=en
Keep up the good work!
Otto
Agreed
Posts: 55
Mac, I couldn't agree with you more. Knoppix has a great documentation system going. I often read it for Mepis problems instead of here because of the organization and large numbers of posts. To see a large boom in quality documentation, the forum system has to be setup with a FAQ or How-To section that people can post to. People who want to contribute would post their documentation there and the moderator/general public will decide what gets onto a semi-static page dedicated to the best/most useful documentation. This leads to spontaneous documentation. People figure out a problem they had, they write it up and post it. If they need to ask someone where to post, or even if they should, a lot of people wont bother.
I have heard that a new forum system is on the way, and I hope so. The main forum systems (phpBB, Invision, vBulletin) are the standards because their useability is so far above systems like the current one in place. Plus, many great forums are free!
Wiki
Posts: 8
I would create a Mepis wiki in a similar way to http://www.knoppix.net documentation.
In this wiki we could publish the pre-HowTo and FAQs (and translate them into different languages).
Regards.