-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi list, right now I'm sitting here and take a look at the GIMP manual at whole. Today the manual is available in over a dozen languages. Thanks to the docbook technology we choose (and that each of us hates sometimes :) we are able to produce the manual as html book, online help and pdf. The pdf version is over 600 pages for english and some of the more completely translated languages. This achievements prove that we as team did a good job so far! Gladly I take the chance to thank everybody for their passion to put the project forward step by step. The manual consists today of three parts: I. Getting started II. How do I become a GIMP wizard? III. The GIMP function reference The division of the parts was done almost exactly one year ago and I think it was a good decision, because we needed to separate the reference section from the First steps as well as from the tutorials. I think the aim of the parts can be described as: I. Get people started - with the manual as well as with GIMP Getting started with the manual: - tell them who we are, about the project and how the GIMP-docs people are related to the GIMP folks - tell them how to access and read the manual / GIMP help Getting started with GIMP: - tell them what is GIMP good for - tell them what happend recently - tell them how to get an own GIMP working environment - guide them through the first start of GIMP - tell them what they see when GIMP is running - tell them the very basics of what they can do with GIMP II. How do I become a GIMP wizard? GIMP concepts - tell them about and explain the principles, ideas and structures behind GIMP Working with GIMP - tell them how to use the power of GIMP by explaining techniques and fields of interest III. The GIMP function reference GIMP toolbox - tell them everything about the toolbox and all the tools GIMP dialogs - tell them everything about the dialogs GIMP commands - tell them everything about the menu entries (except tools, dialogs, filters) GIMP filters - tell them everything about the filters So how the parts work today? From my point of view the reference part is pretty complete and very good usable as context sensitive online help as well as to read about a specific tool or filter. Some work is still to do for filters that are not explained yet or examples which would help to understand some of the commands, but the overall structure fits the needs. For the other parts I think we need to think over the chapter and section structure once more - at least if we all agree to the aim for that parts as described above. The structure of the first part is today: I. Getting started with The GIMP 1. Introduction 1. Welcome to The GIMP 2. What's New in The GIMP? 2.1. Interoperability and standards support 2.2. Shortcut editor 2.3. Plug-in previews 2.4. Real-time previews of transform operations 2.5. GNOME Human Interface Guide conformance 2.6. GTK+ 2.4 migration 2.7. Basic vector support 2.8. Also . . . 3. Running GIMP 3.1. Command Line Arguments 3.2. Known platforms 3.3. Language 4. Starting GIMP the first time 2. GIMP Concepts 1. Main Windows in GIMP 1.1. The Main Toolbox 1.2. Image Window 1.3. Dialogs and Docking 2. Working with Images 2.1. Opening Images 2.2. Altering Images 2.3. Saving Images 3. Basic GIMP Concepts 3.1. Image types 3.2. QuickMask 3.3. Layers 3.4. Layer modes 3.5. The Selection 3.6. Undoing 3.7. Grids and Guides 3.8. Paths 3.9. Brushes 3.10. Gradients 3.11. Patterns 3.12. Palettes 3.13. Text and Fonts 3. Getting Unstuck 1. Stuck! 2. Common causes of GIMP non-responsiveness to make it short, I'd suggest the following structure instead (3rd level stripped for readability reasons): I. Getting started with The GIMP 1. Introduction 1. Welcome to The GIMP project 2. What's New in The GIMP? 2. Fire up the GIMP 1. Running GIMP 2. Starting GIMP the first time 3. Main Windows in GIMP 4. Working with Images 3. Getting Unstuck 1. Stuck! 2. Common causes of GIMP non-responsiveness As you can see, I'd relocate the concepts completely to part II. Although they describe GIMP basics, most of them are (and have to be) very detailed and technically. Much to complicated for the users first touch with GIMP. Instead I'd suggest to enhance the Working with Images section a bit for ONE step by step tutorial that is sexy and makes the reader "hot" for GIMP and the more detailed parts of the manual. The most problems I've right now with part II. Today the structure is: II. How do I become a GIMP wizard? 4. Concepts for the Intermediate 1. Plugins 1.1. Introduction 1.2. Using Plugins 1.3. Installing New Plugins 1.4. Writing Plugins 2. Using Script-Fu Scripts 2.1. Script-Fu? 2.2. Installing Script-Fus 2.3. Do's and Don'ts 2.4. Different Kinds Of Script-Fus 2.5. Standalone Scripts 2.6. Image-Dependent Scripts 5. Using GIMP as a Beginner 1. Files 1.1. Creating new Files 1.2. Opening Files 1.3. Saving Files 2. Drawing Simple Objects 2.1. Drawing a Straight Line 2.2. Creating a Basic Shape 3. Creating and Using Selections 3.1. Moving a Selection 3.2. Creating a Free Selection 4. Dialogs and Docking 4.1. Creating Docking Dialogs 4.2. Removing Tabs 5. How to Set Your Tile Cache 6. Using GIMP as an Intermediate 1. Using the Quickmask 2. Creating New Layers 3. Paths 3.1. Path creating 3.2. Stroking a Path 3.3. Transforming Paths 4. Working with Digital Camera Photos 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Improving Composition 4.3. Improving Colors 4.4. Adjusting Sharpness 4.5. Removing Unwanted Objects from an Image 4.6. Saving Your Results 5. Preparing your Images for the Web 5.1. Images with an Optimal Size/Quality Ratio 5.2. Reducing the File Size Even More 5.3. Saving Images with Transparency 6. Adding New Brushes 7. Using GIMP as an Expert 1. Text 1.1. Embellishing Text 1.2. Adding Fonts 1.3. Font Problems 2. Rendering a Grid 3. A Script-Fu Tutorial 3.1. Getting Acquainted With Scheme 3.2. Variables And Functions 3.3. Lists, Lists And More Lists 3.4. Your First Script-Fu Script 3.5. Giving Our Script Some Guts 3.6. Extending The Text Box Script 4. Creating Shortcuts to Menu Functions 5. The GIH dialog box 6. Creating a brush with variable size I just can't follow the idea of making a 3 step difference between beginners, advanced users and experts. For sure these experience levels exist, but does it make any sense to differentiate the manual this way? Sure we have to build an entrance to GIMP for the absolute beginners, but is "sharpening an image" really a topic for an Intermediate while "Setting the tile cache" is for Beginners? I doubt so. The question is now, how to reorganize all the great content we have already? What about a structure that has a in depth concepts chapter and is in the rest of the part more "field of interest" oriented structured? How about: II. How do I become a GIMP wizard? 4. Concepts 1. Image concepts 3.1. Image types 3.2. QuickMask 3.3. Layers 3.4. Layer modes 3.5. The Selection 3.8. Paths 2. User Interface concepts x.x. Toolbox and image windows x.x. Dialogs and Docking 3.7. Grids and Guides 3. Workflow concepts 3.6. Undoing 3.9. Brushes 3.10. Gradients 3.11. Patterns 3.12. Palettes 3.13. Text and Fonts 4. Extension concepts 1. Plugins 2. Script-Fu 5. Getting work done with GIMP 1. Getting an Image 1.1. Creating new Files 1.2. Opening Files x.x. Scanning 2. Creating and Using Selections 1. Using the Quickmask 3.1. Moving a Selection 3.2. Creating a Free Selection 3. Working with Paths 4. Working with Layers 5. Drawing Simple Objects 2.1. Drawing a Straight Line 2.2. Creating a Basic Shape 6. Working with Text in Images 7. Working with Digital Camera Photos 8. Scripting the GIMP 8.1 A Script-Fu Tutorial 9. Pimp my GIMP 10. Storing Images 1.3. Saving Files for later 5. Preparing your Images for the Web x.x. Printing with GIMP What do you think about this? May be we can use the time until 2.4 comes to life to sort this out and shuffle the sections around. Again - - I think all the content we wrote so far is valuable but needs a reordering for some sections and here and there the removal of redundancies. Greetings, lexA - --- Live is like a chocolate box, you never know what you wanna get... GPG Signatur auf http://wernicke-online.net/Impressum/ prüfen - --- Remember: There are only two tools in life. WD-40, for when something doesn't move, and should, and Duct Tape, for when something is moving and it shouldn't. So does the universe explode if you spray duct tape with WD-40? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Darwin) iD8DBQFFzyLbR9mXLVsAbiQRApchAKDBA8cYuALEaTrFGOPzCw02QUUUgACgvGJU yjEm/kHK0t80TMAJAaZScak= =Ao+y -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Gimp-docs mailing list Gimp-docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-docs
