[squeakland] Re: Etoys documentation TOC

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Thu Sep 3 07:38:12 EDT 2009


On 03.09.2009, at 13:23, Timothy Falconer wrote:

> On Sep 3, 2009, at 7:01 AM, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> as you all know we don't really have an Etoys documentation. So  
>> let's start writing it. As I wrote earlier I propose to use FLOSS  
>> Manuals. It is used by the olpc and sugar community for writing  
>> manuals and books. To get started we should have a TOC outline.  
>> Here are my suggestions:
>>
>> 1. Introduction (short description what etoys is about)
>> 2. Getting started (technical description on how to install and  
>> start etoys on different operating systems)
>> 3. User Interface (painting tools, halo, viewer ...)
>> 4. Tiles (describing every available tile)
>> 5. Objects (everything from the supplies bin and object catalogue,  
>> flaps)
>>
>> What am I missing? Of course we can have subchapters and also later  
>> add main chapters if we find out we need it. Here is the manual for  
>> TurtleArt so you can get the idea what our documentation could look  
>> like:
>> http://en.flossmanuals.net/turtleart
>>
>> What do you think? If we come up with a TOC outline I can send it  
>> to Anne Gentle from FLOSS manuals to set it up and we can start  
>> writing:)
>
> It's a good list.  So this would be more of a reference manual than  
> a getting started guide?  (with tutorials)


IMHO that would be much harder to write than a reference manual. It's  
still desperately needed of course but we should start simple.

The reference manual also serves another purpose: it defines the  
boundary of what we consider officially supported, and what not. As  
you know there is much more in Etoys than is easily accessible on the  
surface. If it's documented, we try hard support it. If not, you may  
still use it but can't rely on to work in future versions.

- Bert -



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