The non-tech page

[Jean Francois Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

This is the projected page detailing the tasks people who are not programmers
and not Unix experts could do.    BTW I am submitting
these pages for comments
 
-- 
                Jean Francois Martinez

The Independence project: because Linux should be for everyone
http://independence.seul.org

Title: Non Technical tasks for Independence

Non Technical tasks for Independence

Can you help Indy if you are not a programmer or a Linux expert? Sure, you can. In fact some of the tasks presented in this page could be qualified as multipliers: a programmer will have an influence on the success of Indy, a person whose actions lead to several programmers working for Indy will have a still greater impact. So even a non Linux expert you can you can do something important for Indy.

Advocacy

Indy cannot succeed without additional developers and it will be
useless if it does not reach the people it intends to help.  Speaking
about Indy around you, improving key texts of Indy in order to
increase their impact, posting about development milestones on
Freshmeatnet, Newsforge or similar sites can have a direct influence
on the number of people developing Independence and its success.

Testing and evaluating

Testing Indy of course but also evaluating software in your area of
expertise (eg: sound software if you are a musician), http://linuxberg.com is a good place
for finding it.  If you have unusual hardware, a Winmodem or an
USB-based ADSL modem then you could test drivers we are presently
unable to test.  If you are using Mandrake, Suse, Caldera or Redmond
Linux we are interested in what cool features they have and Indy is
lacking.  If you hear about a program who can be useful for practical
life, child education or allows to do cool things you could speak us
about it.  If there is a task who is forcing you to reboot Windows or
if the program we ship is not good we would like to know about
it.  You could also keep a watch on http://freshmeat.net or http://linuxapps.com and take note of
interesting announces: this can allow us to improve Indy's software
selection.

Collecting tutorials, fonts, color profiles

One of Indy's key ideas is that Linux should not be considered as just a boring server. We want people using it for office work but crappy fonts severely hamper use of Linux office suites. We want people using it for graphics but what good is Gimp if monitor does not render correctly? You can do something about it. Help us finding good free fonts (ie they must be allowed for any use), help us with color profiles: download them from the site of the manufacturer of your monitor, scanner or printer and send them to us. Still better: be the person supervising font or profile collection.

Of what use is a program if you don't know what to do with it? That is why we need people wanting to evaluate and collect tutorials and e-books. One program we are specially fond of is Blender but we are also interested in people wanting to evaluate e-books about pure Linux subjects. If you are not an expert of a subject you cannot judge on accuracy of the doc but you can be a better judge on its pedagogical value.

General ergonomy

Improving the menu layout and making it clearer, selecting fonts who
provide better readabililty, evaluating user interfaces.

Documentation

Only an expert can write about technical subjects but introductory
texts require less expertise and thetre is also a need for a text
presenting Indy specific software so the user at least knows it is
there.

Translations

Specialists in IT tend to be fluent in English but most other people
aren't.   At this time you could translate the package descriptions.
It is really easy.  We are changing
installer and once we get the new one we will need it translated to
your native language.   In the interim there are tutorials and e-books
in need of translation.

Conclusion

You don't know where to begin?  Don't worry we will do our best to
provide you with resources.   But Indy needs your help.

Join Us!