Am Die, 2003-08-19 um 14.25 schrieb Branko Collin: > Thank you for your elaborate answer. I do have some follow-up > questions though.
No problem, whatever you want to know. :)
> Assume for a second that I know nothing about 'modern manuals'. What
> is it about them that you like. What did Mel not like about the
> language of the old manual?
The old manual (or at least the content we had, I've never read the
book, see below) was anachronistic, more like a reference than a fluent
style, every single part following the exactly same style like a
manpage. We changed quite a lot and tried to enrich the content as much
as we could but Mel felt that it was too tight to reuse and that it
would be better to completely start over; I liked that idea so this is
what we did.
> So, when you are talking about the GUM, are you talking about that
> obscure book, or about the help files, or both?
The old gimp-help content was derived from this "obscure book" with
consent from the authors, so yes. In the beginning we just had the HTML
which was converted over to DocBook/SGML in quite some amount of work
and reformatted to be useful.
> Are you trying to make a manual and help files in one?
Ultimatively yes. We tried to start with the manual though and haven't
cared to much about the "help files" so far. In the end the help files
will simply be fractions of the manual whether HTML or some other
format, optionally reformatted for better use in a helpbrowser.
> Ah, OK, so when you say size, you don't mean physical size?
Size is the perceived size, whether that are kilobyte, megabyte, lines
or words (real or with markup) doesn't matter.
> But that the document is on-topic for the user?
I beg your pardon?
> Probably not. But I imagine that if I wanted to see a page about one
> of the blur filters, you would be able to provide me with a page
> about that help filter.
That for sure. Uncertain is how much information you'll get.
--
Servus,
Daniel
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