- From: olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 17:34:48 +0900
- To: QA Dev <public-qa-dev@w3.org>
- Message-Id: <8CAE548A-AEEF-11D8-8D39-000393A63FC8@w3.org>
There seems to have been a few discussions on the validator's documentation recently, I'll try and summarize what I am aware of so that we can improve the documentation globally, not just locally. 1- I had a discussion with Bjoern on the help&FAQ document. Bjoern would certainly be better at explaining his point, but his ideas were basically that * having a FAQ and a docs link in the navbar was confusing * help should be a help page, not a FAQ * mixing general, legal and technical aspects in the FAQ was not a good idea * there should be a "top validation problems" document. http://esw.w3.org/topic/ValidationProblems 2- Terje and Daniel Biddle (deltab) had a discussion on IRC about the need for a document stating what the markup validator does *not* do... CSS, script check, link check, spell check, and other web page quality checks 3- the docs/ index should be made more compact for an easier global view of the documentation Ideas about this. Should really be considered more as ramblings than actually a plan. Solving the FAQ/document index problem. I admit the FAQ (with three sections on about / using / common problems) casts a big shadow on the documentation index, and since many have to scroll to find the links for the "frequently asked questions", it might not be too useful. If we manage to improve the documentation index there should not be a need for two entry points to the documentation. What are the use cases where we really want people to find the documentation easily? perhaps not advanced users. Some people have been asking for a document to link the icons from (instead of revalidation, which is the official use for the icons) and a section has been added to the help doc to help that, but not sure it's really useful. Maybe we need to think more of all the usage scenarios for the documentation before revamping it. Should "what the validator is not" be a part of "what the validator is (about)"? Should we have a specific document on license, usage rights and other legalese fun? More sections for the documentation? General help (help, about), Usage (users, favelets, accesskeys) Troubleshooting (common validation problems, error message explanations) Installation and development (the rest). Should the documentation index link to all or focus on introducing the most important and link to second-level docs from first-level docs (e.g link favelets from users, etc)? All for now. Comments and your answers to all these questions much welcome, otherwise i'll just keep them here for reference and keep playing with the documentation until I have something I am happy with - no real urgency anyway. -- olivier
Received on Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:34:56 UTC