Mail Archives: djgpp/1996/12/04/20:20:04
Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
> I'm not sure. Making 3 documents will sure increase the probability that
> our John Doe won't have the one he needs when he needs it. The FAQ (in
> all 3 formats) is only 360KB compressed; I don't think this is *that*
> much to download.
Most definitely true. It's hard enough convincing people to get the FAQ
in a single file, much less telling them, "Oh, you have parts 1 and 2 of
the FAQ, but you also need part 3 which covers these problems..." I can
see user frustration levels rising rapidly... :)
> Are the searches that complicated? The FAQ has 2 large and elaborate
> indices at its end; I expect people to use them to search for what they
> are after. If that is not enough, I could think about more efficient ways
> to index the FAQ. But I need user feedback about how people search and
> what their experiences are; obviously, I'm not the person to return such a
> feedback to myself, since I remember too well what's in there to be able
> to find it using Less or fgrep. So I'd like to take this opportunity to
> ask people to give me that feedback, especially if they think that the
> indices and the table of contents aren't efficient enough.
I have never had significant problems with the FAQ. The first few times
I used it, it seemed a bit daunting in size, but now it is like an old
friend that I go to constantly for advice. :) For me, the easiest way
to look for topics in the FAQ is to just press 's' to search for the
term or terms appropriate to my (or another user's) problem. If I don't
find it the first time, I press 's' and Enter to search again. This
technique is successful over 95% of the time. If it doesn't work, then
I find the appropriate chapter of the FAQ and browse the topic headings
until I see what I am looking for.
TO ALL USERS: The importance of taking the time to read the FAQ
completely through at least once CANNOT be understated! Even if you
don't understand everything in there the first time (and I didn't,
believe me!), you should understand enough that you either don't make
the kinds of mistakes that are described in the FAQ, or know generally
where to look if you do.
On the other hand, I have seldom seriously used either of the indices to
search for the solution to a problem. The biggest reason for this is
that if a given term appears in the index, it will almost always also
appear in the appropriate section of the FAQ, and thus a simple text
search is more efficient in finding it than browsing the index. One
thing I would like to see that would make the index more user-friendly
is a search-by-term system similar to the one Windows Help uses. The
user could type in a term and Info would display a list of all topics in
the index matching the term. However, I don't know if the current
version of Info supports this kind of functionality.
Altogether, the FAQ is a fantastic document, and I have to say that of
the users I have referred to it, not a single one has replied to me
saying the FAQ is difficult to use. That, IMHO, is perhaps the best
compliment possible. ;)
--
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| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I | fighteer AT cs DOT com |
| Proud owner of what might one | http://www.cs.com/fighteer |
| day be a spectacular MUD... | Plan: To make Bill Gates suffer |
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