Writing an Application Manual

Notes

Manuals will be included as sub-pages of the main application page. For brevity, I will refer to that main page as Appname. The structure, therefore would be something like:

• Appname
  • Appname/Hints and Tips
• Appname/Manual # Your Contents page
  • Appname/Manual/An Introduction to Appname
  • Appname/Manual/Configuration Choices
  • Appname/Manual/The First Time you use Appname
  • Appname/Manual/section 1
  • Appname/Manual/section xxx
  • Appname/Manual/Hints and Tips
  • Appname/Manual/Troubleshooting
  • Appname/Manual/Found a bug?
  • Appname/Manual/Get involved #link to techbase etc

You will need a scratchpad to experiment with section headings/pages. You can use either your UserTalk page, or the discussion pages attached to the area where you are working. It's helpful if you remove anything no longer required, once the job is completed.

Contents

• Once you have made the decisions (that can be a lengthy procedure), create appropriate links on the Contents page. It is, of course, possible to insert a section later if you find you've missed something.

Building your Manual

• Use the red links to create the page, and write up a section at a time.
• Note on the Discussion page anything you will need to refer to later, such as links that can't yet be created.

Remember

It's important to be consistent, particularly in Manuals, so here are some general rules:

• Take care with heading levels - we start at second level (Mediawiki uses top level for page-name), using ==
• Make sure you refer frequently to this page, to Tasks and Tools and to Typographical Guidelines
• * Check if all table cells have space after the pipe character. This rule conforms with traditional wiki formatting.
• Make application name formatting consistent (avoid using Amaroks, do use Amarok's).
• Ensure that all images are in PNG format (you can use JPEG (.jpeg, not .jpg) as well, but in this case you should convert your images to PNG later. Save work by converting them before you start .
• Remove all non-printable characters from image names.

Preparing the Manual for Translation

• The steps for markup editing can be found on Preparing a Page for Translation. Please adhere to that guide, since old markup styles may not still be relevant.