[scribus] manual

[Margaret and George McIntosh]

On 18 Jul 2010 at 14:10, John Culleton wrote:

> On Sunday 18 July 2010 12:30:37 Alexandre Prokoudine 
> wrote:
> > On 7/18/10, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > > My hat is off to the Scribus team for having created a 
> manual. Few open
> > > source projects have a manual.
> >
> > Quite in opposite. Most GNOME and KDE applications 
> have manuals. Just F1 :)
> >
> > > Most don't even have PDFs. At least half
> > > don't even have a help file.
> >
> > Producing a PDF out of DocBook/XML from any 
> GNOME/KDE app's help is
> > not exactly rocket science.
> >
> > > Some would create documentation, but hate to write, or 
> can't
> > > write at all. To most it never occurs that documentation 
> is important.
> >
> > Writing documentation is not job of a programmer. Then 
> don't have to
> > even think about it.
> 
> In my days as a programming supervisor, it was considered 
> good form to create user documentation first, then do the 
> coding to fit. For program documentation (HIPO diagram, 
> flow chart, Decision Logic tables etc.) that was generally 
> done and approved before coding started.
> 
> In today's world things are different, but the person who 
> understands the functionality is still the best person to write 
> the user guide. I have never understood the unwillingness of 
> programmers to write user guides. After all, English (or 
> whatever) is just another language, like C or Python.

Have you ever read some of Microsoft's help and users manuals? They are written in 
a language I don't understand, even though it is English. Are they written by 
programmers?