Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:05:08 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Orlando Andico <orly AT gibson DOT eee DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph>
Cc: Leath Muller <leathm AT gbrmpa DOT gov DOT au>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: A more readable faq???
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.3.93.960613160619.1243A-100000@gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960613114941.8738A-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Thu, 13 Jun 1996, Orlando Andico wrote:

> Perhaps there should be a "short FAQ" with pointers to the rather daunting
> "big FAQ" which is justifiably so big that there will come a time when the

This is already done.  If you need an answer for a specific question, you 
should look it up either in the table of contents or in the indices at 
the end of the FAQ.  I submit that new users should read the entire FAQ, 
at least superficially, but people who don't want to read the whole thing 
can just look up their problems or issues that are of interest to them 
using the contents and the indices.  (I'm unsure about whether people 
actually use the indices, though, and if so, what are their experience, 
because nobody ever told me anything about this.)

I think making 2 FAQ lists instead of one will add to confusion and make
their maintenance more complex.  So I want to make the FAQ easily
searchable so it won't be necessary to read large chunks of text just to
find an answer to a specific question. 

> (text) version will be too large to read with QEdit.. but then, all the
> more reason to use Emacs compiled with DJGPP.. :)

Why don't you read the Info version of the FAQ with info.exe?  It has a 
search command.  The search strategy should be this:

	* Go to one of the 2 indices.
	* Use `s' (search) command to search for the word(s) pertinent to 
your problem, or just browse through the index (it's organized in 
alphabetic order) and look up the issue you are interested in.
	* Use `m' (menu-item) command to go to the section which 
references the issue.