Top Level Categories

This page is to work on the menu structure for the TopicBasedHelp specification.

• Introduction to Ubuntu
• New to Ubuntu 7.04?
• Adding and Removing Software (from the desktop guide)
• Customising your desktop
• Keeping Your Computer Safe
• Music, Video and Photos
• Internet
• Printing and Faxing
• Running Server Applications

Previews now available at http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/C/ and http://doc.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/C/

Naturally each section would be customised to suit the TopicBasedHelp specification, and incorporate reliable material from other sources, such as the wiki.

Comments/Ideas

Just trying to figure out exactly how this would look which I currently can't in my head especially vs current svn layout. Would each section be a separate document in svn or would it just utilize a different flag, such as <article> instead of <book> to separate this?

• MatthewPaulThomas (comments by MatthewEast in italics): At the top level any categorization is competing with a very tempting search field, so we need to work hard on simplification. I suggest:

  • Don't try to link to every help document from here. This is about the system in general, including the file manager (which most people won't recognize as an individual application) and preferences+administration tools (ditto). Help on things like "Games" and "Office" can be accessed from the Help menus of the relevant programs.

    • The help on Games and Office generally involves pointing people towards relevant programs to install...

      • Those sections can and should be a single page each. -- mpt

  • "Programming", "Setting up a ______ server", and maybe even "Contributing to Ubuntu" could be collected under an "Advanced topics" category.

    • I don't think "Advanced topics" is very helpful in describing what is behind that topic. To be honest, while I appreciate the advantage of keeping the list short, I think setting up server applications is a common enough task that it deserves its own space. If people want to use the search they will, but that shouldn't stop us from providing a solid topic-based table of contents.

  • I think any page should be linked from somewhere. Even if the search can include pages that aren't, it isn't good practice. That will tend to confuse some users, who may rely primarily on browsing. --MattFlaschen

  • Great idea, it seems to be cleaner and nicer than the Edgy one. Topic Based Help is a good reason to simplify the index page to very essential things, because anything else is accessible via the TBH function. --kalon33