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I hope someone will correct this text.Organize pages in the wiki
This simple page, which at the moment is just a sketch, wants to bring together the threads that are dispersed in the forum and try to make order. I hope someone will add the contents that serve to better organize the wiki.
Content and Appearance:
- Content of pages (only useful things, depending on the type of user and type of document, without unnecessary duplication)
- Appearance of the pages (pages clean, neat, easy to read, professional?)
Forum
- Reflect on requests for help made in the forum and use the given examples (if it is required an aid often means that the manual is not exhaustive, in the forum there are good examples, but hard to find)
Documentation structure:
- Links between pages (tree and hierarchy linear, orderly, full)
- Page titles descriptive
- Structure of the documentation (depending on the type of user and the type of documentation):
- Reference (needs indicate precise criteria)
- How to
- Tutorial
- Themed
Who are the users:
- New users FreeCAD:
- Users without CAD experience
- Users with CAD experience
- Users who know how to program
- Users who know FreeCAD:
- Advanced users
- Developers
What the users needs:
- According to the category of the previous point they need different things (to be determined).
- Renato: In my opinion the beginners to FreeCAD (or to CAD?) needs:
- know what are the workbenches, when and how to use them,
- the commands that are available,
- the workflow to use,
- ....
Contributions
- Rules to be respected
- use of: TOC, KEY,TASK,VIEW Macros, tags, navigation bar, GuiCommand box, thumbnails, illustrations, screenshot, Image Sizes, ecc.. , (normandc wrote:... the tags are distracting and should not be used so much in the command reference pages....navigation bar is not very useful, since the toolbar is just a click away, in the workbench page which is linked in the GuiCommand box, which also includes a "See also" field.)
- and content of the texts.
Translations
- Consistent (the reference page is the English page, see the various discussions regarding the rules in the forum)
- Updated (how?)
- FCSTD files for Documentation (wandererfan wrote: It would be nice to have a repository for the fcstd files used to generate screenshots, etc. Then the 2nd author/translator could just open the fcstd with a different locale to generate the new screenshot. This would also for standardization of background colours, font sizes, etc. )
- My personal:
- The wiki, is the best way to create documentation FreeCAD? Would not it be better to reserve it for some issues and create a comprehensive manual for each version?
- About updates, this is a crucial point, I've seen that you do not like docboock, and I do not intend to return to this theme, but docboock allows translators to easily work on documents. Allows you to download the entire document and compare it with the previous one. With this way changes are made always and only in the original document. Then the translators periodically (even daily if they want) downloading the document and compares with an earlier version and update it indicating the upgrade version. I've experienced that this procedure is very good. Can I do a similar thing with the wiki? In this way there is no need to continuously monitor Recent Changes and updates are easier to control.
Some notes taken from the forum
yorikvanhavre wrote: Actually we could do a little brainstorming, see things that should be changed on the wiki... I already thought of a couple of things: - a new wiki homepage with a clear view of the contents - better formatting of the 3 principal sections, for user (basically the command pages), for power users (everything about python) and the higher-level stuff (compiling, etc) - more professional aspect of the wiki pages - build a better and more strict model for command pages - find a good system to handle translations
gdo wrote: But maybe a survey to freecad users could help to understand precisely what is the beginners needs.
Ralf wrote: Even for the ones who are trying FreeCAD the first times, it's essential to find a consistent documentation otherwise they weren't motivated to give even some first tries.
And many more ... dispersed and mixed in:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3167
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3899
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3988
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3959
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4025
