On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Simon Budig wrote:
> Hmm. Looking at the impressive list of questions I get the impression
> that this is a synthetic FAQ - someone has thought a lot about what
> questions might get asked frequently.
>
> While this is a valid approach I think it tends to be duplicate work
> when compared to the regular documentation. We should consider to
> just add the questions that really get asked.
The thing is that in many cases, a question is frequently asked - but
not on any of the GIMP mailing lists. I'm a reasonably proficient
GIMP user - and I get asked LOTS of questions at work - some of them
frequently enough to justify a FAQ entry IMHO. If you just do something
like trawl through the last N years of GIMP user mailing list questions,
I doubt that you'd get a realistic idea of things that could usefully
be in a FAQ.
My #1 FAQ from people where I work is:
Q: I'm trying to paint and nothing is happening - what did I
do wrong?
A: Eeek! There are about 1e6 things that could be:
* You are painting outside of the selection.
* You've picked some kind of 'do nothing' paint.
* Your paint colour is the same as the background.
* You are painting to a layer that's hidden.
* You are painting to a layer that's rendered at
100% transparency.
* Try hitting 'Layers/Anchor'.
* Try hitting 'Layers/Layer-to-Image-Size'.
...and lots of others...
* Look - just save the image, restart GIMP and
load it back in again - I'm too busy to figure
it out.
...and "How do I draw triangles/squares/.../stellated-dodecahedra?"
is definitely second.
Just because something is in the manual doesn't mean it shouldn't
be in the FAQ too. If the question is frequently asked then presumably
it's being asked because the user didn't read the manual or couldn't
find the answer clearly expressed within a reasonable amount of time.
FAQ's are a good shortcut route to answer newbies questions.
----
Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: sjbaker@xxxxxxxx http://www.link.com
Home: sjbaker1@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.sjbaker.org
