suggestion

[Patrick Gundlach <gundlach@irb.cs.uni-dortmund.de>]

Hi,

concerning the suggestion Hans has made, I'd like to add some 
comments:

We have to analyse the questions asked on the list. In my 
opinion it does not make sens just to copy the question and the 
correct answer and make a digest. This would not do any good, 
because we then just have a mere copy of the mailinglist 
(stripped down to the essentials, indeed)

More important is to "rate" the questions:

1) is it a question to wich the answer can be found in the 
manual? Then there is already a documentation for it and we do 
not need to answer it again.

2) is it a question that has not yet been documented? Say for 
example "how can I draw a line below the headline?". (I actually 
do not know if this is in the manual). In this case, we (Hans :->
) should see this as an opportunity to add a few lines to the 
manual, so the next time this questions will not be asked again.

3) a questions that is related to the installation. For example 
the texhash or mktexlsr thing. Or the cont-sys.ori/cont-sys.tex 
stuff. I think these are worth being documented in some extra 
document.

4) bug reports. We do not need to collect them, since one hour 
later 96% of them are already fixed. Just search the archive if 
you have some trouble.

5) Questions regarding fonts/encodings. Yuck. I have no clue what to do 
with them. There is really something that has to be done. I know 
that there is are docs. But there are a many questions on the 
list concerning this subject.

6) request for improvements. They are probably documented in 
Hans' privat todo list... I there a need to collect them? I 
think yes.

7) Questions like "How can this feature xyz (just think of gb's 
indefinate long page that got cut off after each chapter) be 
achieved? These questions are often very esoteric. But imho they 
are worth being collected.

So what is my conclusion? Ignore some questions, improve the 
documentation where necessary, collect some stuff for an extra 
doc. We do not need an faq.

Viele Grüße,

  Patrick Gundlach