[OSGeo-Edu] Fwd: Getting OSGeo-Live Quickstart writing guidelines right

[Cameron Shorter]

OSGeo-Education people,

We are about to review all Quickstarts on OSGeo-Live [1], and I'm very 
keen to get feedback from you people who have experience creating 
tutorial type material.

I'm particularly keen to get our formula for these quickstarts right, as 
I see it as a basis that can be used in future for creating full length 
tutorials for all OSGeo type software.

Could I please impose upon you to have a look over the Quickstarts, and 
note what is good or bad and how we should improve our writing guidelines.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Getting OSGeo-Live Quickstart writing guidelines right
Date: 	Fri, 27 May 2011 09:07:05 +1000
From: 	Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>
To: 	live-demo at lists.osgeo.org <live-demo at lists.osgeo.org>



I'm looking for feedback on how we can improve the OSGeo-Live Quickstart 
writing guidelines [1] before we provide a comprehensive review of all 
Quickstarts [2].

In particular, I'd like to hear from:
1. Quickstart authors, who have used our existing template, to tell us 
what is good and what is not.

2. People from the OSGeo education community (who often are experienced 
in writing training material). I see these quickstarts as a stepping 
stone toward comprehensive OSGeo training material.

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Add_Project#Application_Quick_Start
[2] http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/overview.html

Below are specific comments I've noticed after picking out things I like 
from authors of the current Quickstarts:

*Referencing directories on OSGeo-Live*
Our previous guidelines have been specific about getting an application 
working on OSGeo-Live, however our docs are also being published at 
http://live.osgeo.org
As such, I suggest that we make the docs usable without loading 
OSGeo-Live as well
What this means:
* Have http://localhost/data/... link to data directories. Also have 
osgeo-live data copied to http://live.osgeo.org/data/
* Docs to mention that you can download data from the data/ url.

*Introduction*
* "This quickstart describes how to ..."
This should be made into a heading, as per:
http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/gvsig_quickstart.html

* We should add a Table of Contents, as per:
http://adhoc.osgeo.osuosl.org/livedvd/docs/en/quickstart/udig_quickstart.html

* For some quickstarts, it may be appropriate to add a "What you will 
need" heading.

*Version:*
We should include the OSGeo-Live version and Application version.

*Images:*
* A few projects have provided informative drawing on top of screen 
shots, like including a [1] or [2] circle which matches steps, or draw a 
red ellipse around a button. (See the gvsig tutorial for numbers, 
geonetwork for ellipses).
This is done quite easily with the shutter (linux) or greenshot 
(windows) screenshot tools. I suggest that other quickstarts do this too.
http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/gvsig_quickstart.html

* We haven't got screen shots of menu selection, it would be good to 
have someone provide these.

*Writing Style:*
I really like the writing style for the R and GeoServer quickstarts. 
Both make use of a friendly, conversational tone, similar to the way a 
tutor would talk to a class.
Eg: "Today we will ..., now that is a simple demo but what we'd really 
like is to ..., so lets try applying styling which will ...."
I'd like to encourage other quickstarts to follow this conversational style.

http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/R_quickstart.html
http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/geoserver_quickstart.html

*Reference Material:*
Some projects link to tutorial or reference material which has been 
copied onto OSGeo-Live. I suggest we remove this, and instead point at 
material on the external web.
If we do keep it, we should reference via a http://localhost URL rather 
than via a /usr/local/... filename. (That way it can be referenced from 
http://live.osgeo.org/... as well)

*OpenStreetMap:*
* There are a number of applications written up under 
OpenStreetMapTools. I'm included to suggest that they should be broken 
up with their own pages,? There are five of them plus Prune which is 
written separately.

*Data:*
There seems to be some common datasets that we should be providing:
* GPX file(s) to be used in navigation examples (Prune, OSM Tools)
* Photos with GPS metadata? (Viking)
* A SLD stylesheet (Mapnik?)
* A local dataset (GeoMoose, ?)

*Example OSGeo-Live Web Services:*
I wonder how hard it would be to set up a demo server with OSGeo-Live 
web services installed, such that external users to try it out. (This is 
not required for our documentation, but it would be a nice addition)


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Director
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com

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