Re: [seul-edu] Doc Project will move again!

[Bill Tihen -- Information Technology <bill@mail.tasis.ch>]

Hi Roger,

The idea of a meta-document seems like a good idea, but I also think, an actual 
configuration useful to a school is often missing in many of these services.  
They often assume the reader knows a lot about what they are trying to do.  I 
found this to be a difficult and time consuming way to learn.  I have no big 
desire to repeat everything others have said, just to make it useful with clear 
examples and to relate that to school topics.

IMP for example has 4 different docs one needs to read to set it up.  You have 
to know what you are looking for and what the decision you make mean.  Or the 
sticky bit for group/class accounts.  Anyway, I agree and we will do our best 
not to just repeat what others have done.

As far as I know I have seen very little documentation on how to use OSS user 
tools outside of GIMP (of which I have now seen about 3 books).  However, I was 
going to have them written in a how to format.  

How to use abiword to create tables with the tabs instead of just explaining 
what tabs are and how to use them.  The same types of things with gnumeric.  I 
wrote one of these several years ago for the Windows platform and used it to 
teach computer basics.  I used only the software installed by default on a 
windows system (so I didn't cover spreadsheets -- the school didn't have that 
much software).  Basically, I was figuring on modeling them like IDG's Teach 
Yourself series.  Tons of examples and things to do -- minimal text.  I haven't 
seen one of these for Gnome/kde, but I will have her poke around and see what 
other tutorials she can find.

Quoting Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>:
> But just so somebody has pointed it out -- I'm pretty sure there are
> documents out there already that describe 'how users can use network
> services'. There are definitely documents that describe configuring
> the services with Linux. Were you hoping to be generic and useful to

> smooth and well-organized. (Though perhaps the user-level documentation
> you were considering wasn't the sort of thing they're working on there?
> I don't know.)
> 
> And as always, if you need help publicizing your docs here, let me
> know. :)
> 
> --Roger
>