[scribus] are you experienced?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:56:49 -0400
Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com> dijo:

>If you are, read my new entry in the wiki blog (even if you're not,
>you can read it too):
>
>http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Blog:Scribus_Times_and_Gazette/Searching_for_a_new_angle_in_documentation
>
>I have little idea how much time and work this project will take, but 
>it's one of these brain itches I need to scratch at a bit.

Whenever I need to use software that I am unfamiliar with I generally
start with a simple project. And then another project, perhaps months
later. And another. And another. In fact, the initial project is
probably what drove me to try the program in the first place.

A big advantage of learning a program this way is that I learn the
parts that *I* need to know about for the kinds of work that *I* do. It
is also very efficient. And I remember what I learned better because I
learned it by doing it. The disadvantage is that there will always be
holes in my knowledge of the program. To me, the advantages far
outweigh the disadvantages.

Because of my way of learning programs I strongly support your idea of
task-oriented Scribus. However, I'm not sure that creating
documentation aimed at specific types of tasks is necessarily useful.
If the documentation has a search feature I can look things up as I
need them - assuming I can figure out what the feature I am looking for
is called. Knowing the terminology of a new program is always
frustrating.

I also like the idea of workflow documentation although, again, I
wonder about its usefulness. On the other hand, when I gave a recent
talk about Scribus the audience (Linux heads, programmers, computer
science people) were amazed at ideas like line screen and banding,
colors out of gamut, and even CMYK. Some didn't even know the
difference between a vector and a raster image. I think the workflow
idea might be very useful as a framework for general DTP stuff.