GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 98394
The GIMP needs a new FAQ
Last modified: 2015-11-24 00:09:39 UTC
The old FAQ hasn't been updated since 1999. Even then it was getting a bit crufty. There has been no FAQ for 1.2 at all. Carol, edsapir and I were talking about what is needed to get a FAQ on #gimp. I think that some kind of chapter-based scheme (similar to the comp.lang.c FAQ at http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html) is good, and edsapair suggested wiki (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki) as an approach. The most important thing, though, is to have FAQs and answers grouped in one place. Chapter divisions, maintainership, etc will sort themselves out once the FAQ is in place, IMHO. But to get a FAQ in place, we need some ideas on things like submission criteria, we need a forum for proposed answers, and we need someone (or a group of someones) to assimilate all that information into one document. Cheers, Dave.
I agree that the GIMP would need a new FAQ. The current ones (User and Developer FAQs) are outdated and do not give the correct information in many cases. However, there are a few important points that I would like to stress: - The first virtue of a FAQ is to be short and concise. If it is too long, then the users will have a hard time finding an answer to their questions (or in other words, finding the questions in the FAQ that are as close as possible to their own questions). - The FAQ should not repeat the tips of the day. - The FAQ should not be a substitute for the online help. If some questions come up because the help pages are not addressing a problem correctly, then it is better to spend some time improving the help pages instead of working around it and adding this to the FAQ. - The FAQ should answer real questions from the users. The questions that are never asked by the users do not need to be in the FAQ (we can make exceptions for "what is the GIMP?" and "where can I get the GIMP?"). I think that it would be better to host the FAQ on www.gimp.org if possible.
I created a much modified version of the current user faq, including updated answers, removal of obsolete questions, and several new FAQ's. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the documentation, I noticed that the license on the GIMP User FAQ doesn't allow modification. :( If we can't get a hold of Miles O'Neil, we'll have to do a clean room reimplementation of the FAQ. This time, let's use the GNU FDL as the license for the FAQ. My experience with using wikis and FAQ-O-Matics is that the quality of answers varies dramatically, and that there are always many more questions than answers. Of course, we could have a designated FAQ maintainer to look over the answers and make sure they are complete and high quality, but if that is the case, it would be about as much work as a conventially maintained FAQ.
Yes, we should try to contact Miles and get his permission. I am not too fond of the Wiki idea. I'd rather have a document that is under CVS control (like all other pages on www.gimp.org) and one maintainer who takes care of this (and other web editors who could fix some problems while the maintainer is away).
Wikis are often CVS or RCS-backed. (For example, TWiki is).
This was discussed at camp, but got lost in the ether afterwards. We need a maintainer for a FAQ, and no-one has volunteered yet. Changing milestone to Future. Dave.
I would like to maintain a GIMP FAQ as also stated at camp - but seeing that a site people spent a lot of time is still waiting to replace www.gimp.org is not exactly encouraging.
I can also help for the FAQ. Some time ago, I collected some of the questions that were posted frequently in comp.graphics.apps.gimp. I hope that I can still find that list somewhere. ;-) Regarding the web site, I agree that it is not very encouraging. As far as I know, everybody on the team has decided to stop working on the site until it is moved, so we are all waiting for this to happen before making further improvements. I have just opened a separate bug report about this (bug #127895) because this is also preventing us from getting new people on board (like the mailing lists).
A FAQ would indeed be nice but it doesn't block the 2.0 release, so there's no point in having the report on the 2.0 release milestone.
Changing all www.gimp.org bugs from gimp product to the gimp-web product, including old closed/fixed bugs, and reassigning.
FYI: A new developers FAQ is taking shape at http://developer.gimp.org/faq.html
There has been some effort to establish a FAQ in the wiki, but it seems to be abandoned - but since it is a wiki, anyone could contribute... http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/UserFaq
*** Bug 561104 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html has been rewritten - I'm solving this as fixed, issues with the current content should be filed as new bugs.