Re: lynx-dev Re: lynx primer page

[Al Gilman]

to follow up on what Philip Webb said:

> 980629 Richard Piccard wrote: 
> > You might find something useful at
> >   http://www.ohiou.edu/~acatec/internet/intermediate/lynx.html
> > This was prepared some time ago as the slide show for a 2-hour seminar
> > whose audience was hands-on using Lynx as the seminar progressed. 
>  
> i had a look at those pages, but they seem rather sketchy without slides
> & they are an introduction to the WWW, rather than to Lynx.

That's a pretty good way to teach Lynx, in the cracks of an
introduction to the Internet.

> i still invite constructive comment on my draft Lynx Help for Beginners
> at  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/hfb.html ,
> which is intended for the sort of people who mail to lynx-dev,
> asking "How do I interrupt a download or find the current page's URL?".
> they don't know about  k  or  =
> & apparently the Users' Guide is too long for them to read thro',
> so i've tried to compose something accessible quick'n'at-a-glance.

I see.  I was thrown off by your earlier statement that this was to
be for newbies, i.e.  first-time users.

My first reaction was that I like the flow of your major topics.
My second reaction was that you include too much for beginners
when they are beginning.

Now that I understand you objective a little better I have some
ideas for you to consider.

Once you lay the material out in linear order, it gets too long
for people to put up with reading it linearly when they have
something specific that they want to do and they don't know how.

You might get more thanks from users with an index to the Help
and User's Guide cross-referenced from the terms that people
actually use in questions.  For example, "mail" is not a major
topic in the Lynx documents, but it is a likely hit in user
questions.  A cross-index that links to the various help
paragraphs that touch on mail would be something that might draw
use and word-of-mouth recommendations.

A method for developing this could be to take the questions that
have actually shown up on the list, try them against Scott's
"search the help" server, and where the words don't match up add
entries to the cross-reference page until the actual user
questions are covered between the actual document text and the
user-lingo cross-reference.

> once perfected, hopefully it can be added as 1st link on the Help screen.

Consider "a link."  It's probably worth that long before perfected.

Al