I'm not a WG member, so take these comments as you will.
On 2014-08-29 23:06, Pete Travis wrote:
On 08/29/2014 07:26 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Pete Travis <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
This seems like [another] case of "we want to show all available
desktop
files without filters, but that looks cluttered, so all other
packages
should change so we don't have to add filters." I appreciate the
work
you're putting into the details on the default install, really, but
as has
often been pointed out it will be really easy to gain that clutter
back with
Software. Two things can change here; *all* packages shipping
desktop
files, or the *one* displaying them.
If your criticism can't be constructive, don't say anything.
Please stop proposing disruptive changes so late in the release cycle.
We're into alpha freeze now, it isn't a good time to tweak things that
touch release criteria.
Maybe we can target Fedora 22 for this then if necessary. The original
bug was raised about 2 years ago, it's not going anywhere..
Please take a collaborative approach to dealing with issues when they
touch on other groups' products and priorities. I don't have a problem
with the Workstation WG making their own choices, but your proposals
affect others. Bring the discussion to stakeholders, we're not
uncompromising about these things. If you leave other contributors out
of the discussion, it leads to the inference that you are unhappy with
their work, unwilling to voice your concerns or address them
cooperatively, and are deliberately obfuscating controversial decisions
in the hope that noone will notice and disagree with you. I don't
think
that's what is actually happening here, but you asked for constructive
criticism...
This clearly goes both ways. The original bug was obviously discussed
extensively by docs, with some rather impolite responses given to the
original reporter, which is not particularly conducive for a
re-engagement. Brigading on both sides is not constructive. This affects
lots of people, most importantly the Fedora end users (such as everyone
who is now rapidly trying to leave XP :)).
That said, users *should* have Release Notes, by default, offline,
and
discoverable. Fedora changes a lot between releases, and I sincerely
believe that taking the extra measures to expose users to this
documentation
helps alleviate frustration and prevents dissatisfaction when
something
doesn't work as expected. What seems obvious in context isn't always
so
apparent to those on the outside of your process. A measurable
portion of
users will look for the reasoning and recommended remedies for
unexpected
things they encounter.
No other operation system comes with the release notes bundled with
the OS. This is not really a thing users *expect*.
Are we trying for parity with other operating systems? The point seems
a bit non sequitur, but to address it directly: Fedora is different
from
other operating systems. The purpose of the Release Notes is to
communicate that. There are a lot of complaints about unexpected
behavior and confusion following each release in the support venues I
monitor, so yes, I think the extra exposure really does help.
You are complaining about introducing a non sequitur, but your answer
seems to be that in order to help people find information about things
Fedora does that are unconventional and unexpected we should continue to
provide this information primarily by a method that is unconventional
and unexpected. This seems like very faulty reasoning to me.
Release notes, however you wish to spin it are not an *application*.
Talking about involving the relevant parties, have we had feedback from
people on the Usability SIG as to whether it is confusing to have to
look in Applications for something that is not an Application?
FWIW I genuinely had no idea Fedora 20 had a release notes item in the
applications menu. I wasn't looking for it there. I'm unconvinced how
helpful it is and the argument that 'it should be everywhere because
then people will find it sooner or later' is pretty thin to me - it just
starts to look messy.
If we want to highlight the release notes we put it in their home folder
and maybe even look into how to make it open on first boot of Fedora.
This is the logical place I feel. Personally I'd add it to their desktop
but you have to add extensions to get that to happen in Gnome 3.
It is possible that we still have to fix GNOME Help and put it there
instead (which feels like the best place to me), but dismissing removing
the webpage shortcut from the applications list is not a reasonable
position.
Not everyone will simply think "oh, I can install that firewall
config tool
with Software, I'm just going to accept that and not question it or
look for
more information." Some will look for RNs, some will look for
speculative
forum posts, some will look for blog posts, and some will look for
*you* to
*personally justify* your actions. Our goal is to provide all of
these
people the information they need to understand the behavior they
encounter
and achieve the behavior they want. It's a service provided by the
Docs
team to both users *and* developers. The benefits outweigh the pain
of
having an icon that you aren't that interested in.
I don't understand what's the problem with having the release notes
available on the web and linked to in the download page and in the
support page.
There's no problem with those things. More exposure is better - and
remember, part of the goal here is to represent *your work* to your
users. I want people who install Fedora Workstation to understand the
design goals and purpose of Workstation, the features it offers, and
how
to use it.
As a maintainer of that package, I'd welcome specific suggestions or
requests to improve presentation.
Few options:
* Instead of installing a launcher, make it available in
gnome-documents or yelp. You can separate the launcher to a subpackage
for desktops that don't care about the application model or having a
consistent user experience.
* Do nothing. We can exclude the release notes from the Workstation
media. It will still be available in the web.
I don't buy the idea that presenting users with documentation conflicts
with a consistent user experience. If anything, presenting the Release
Notes as a GNOME product rather than a Fedora product, but only in
Workstation, is not consistent for this package.
I really hope we are talking about presenting users with documentation
in a format that is appropriate for the GNOME environment, not whether
we present it at all. Certainly all the focus in this thread has been
about how to make it available in other ways.
Meanwhile...
On 08/29/2014 07:30 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
Before chiming in on this discussion, I figured I should look at what
we
actually ship as the release notes.
Here is what I get on f21 when trying to launch fedora-release-notes.
$ gtk-launch fedora-release-notes.desktop
gvfs-open: file:///usr/share/doc/fedora-release-notes-20/index.html:
error opening location: Error when getting information for file
'/usr/share/doc/fedora-release-notes-20/index.html': No such file or
directory
I'm not easily discouraged, so I pointed manually at the right file:
gvfs-open file:///usr/share/doc/fedora-release-notes/en-US/index.html
This succeeds in opening a web browser, with a page that reads:
This document provides the release notes for Fedora 19...
Ugh... fair point. At this stage in the release cycle, we're still
writing copy. I have a draft with 'this is a pre-release made for
testing, please report bugs to bz and feature observations to docs'
around somewhere to bridge the gap, and will add that to my list for
this weekend.
I think this nicely illustrates some of the downsides of locally
installing frequently changing content, in particular if this is not
the
sole (or primary) means of publication:
It breaks, it gets outdated, and nobody notices.
It changes *a lot* prior to GA. After that, it's minor corrections and
translation updates. If we're talking about the efficacy of the copy
itself, we could always use some help! Keeping track of Workstation
alone has been difficult.
Given this state of affairs, and the fact that we already bury the
release notes launcher in the sundry folder, I think it would make a
lot
of sense to instead arrange for it to become pre-seeded content in
documents, like the gnome-document getting-started guide is treated
currently. If we do that, the release notes will still show up
prominently in shell searches, thanks to the gnome-documents search
provider.
Matthias
Bastien replies with a note that PDFs are needed for this - we can do
PDFs. How does this pre-seeding work in practice? How does having the
documentation show up prominently in shell searches via this mechanism
better align with the design goals of Workstation, as compared to the
current implementation?
A search finds files and documents, as well as applications.
The Applications menu shows applications. I think there is a definite
difference here. If Release Notes launched an application rather than a
web page shortcut it might be debatable.
--
-- Pete Travis
- Fedora Docs Project Leader
- 'randomuser' on freenode
- immanetize@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Philip Whitehouse
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