Re: [Flightgear-devel] New styled FGFS--Manual

[<tho...@jy...>]

> As we accept that any professional can
> participate in the design, we should also trust our users to generate
> and maintain their manuals by themselves! FGFS, FGFS-wiki, Wikipedia,
> Linux, etc. etc. -- they all proved that it works!

Here's an actual user commenting on the state of the Wiki:

http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=15215&p=149638#p149514

(he thinks it doesn't work). No idea what user you have been talking to. I
think the FG wiki is a great place to store ideas, dump obscure technical
instructions for specialists or document some special features - but I
certainly would *not* advise any new user to learn how FGFS works with
anything styled like our Wiki.

I also have issues with Wikipedia - it always seems to move down to the
lowest common denominator of all who want to edit an article. Basically,
an article isn't bad as such, but whenever I compare something on
Wikipedia with something a selected group of specialists has written,
Wikipedia scores rather low. So usually I use Wikipedia just as index to
find what I am really looking for.

> Why shouldn't we, as the promoters of the most modern style of
> designing, not also make use of the most modern style of
> reading/studying/updating manuals, dictionaries, newspapers, etc.?

Call me old-fashioned, but I read my newspaper starting at the beginning
of an article and ending at the end. Jumping cross references is very bad
for focusing attention and just generates a lot of noise which makes it
difficult for the information content to come through efficiently.

> Most kids today learn how to generate a Homepage and use "html" - while
> "LaTeX" (and similar) needs some more "unique"
> skills/environments/procedures. It is streamlined for the use in
> "publishing houses/departments" - with the need for a so called
> "corporate identity".

It seems you still don't understand what LaTeX is for. You can easily turn
LaTeX into both html and a printed book automatically - but you can't ever
turn html back into anything resembling a printed book withd ecent layout 
without tons of manual input.

> Please let me know if you have an issue with that - otherwise I will
> start to setup FGFS-wiki versions.

I think you can set up anything on the Wiki which you like - it just
doesn't remove the need to have 'The Manual' if you want to offer a
serious and structured documentation.

My 2 cents anyway.

* Thorsten