Re: About tips

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:40:46PM -0500, Kevin Forge wrote:
> JF Martinez wrote:
> > 
> > What we lack presently for our database of tips is someone _officially_
> > assuming the task of collecting the tips posted to the list, refining
> > them and eventually mantaining them
> > 
> > IMHO we should not go beyond some 20 or 30 tips since we don't want
> > the user having forgotten the tip before having to use it.  So I
> > prefer a relatively small number of really useful tips the user will
> > see quite often until he thinks he knows them all by heart and switch
> > off the feature.
> 
> I have taken the job.  
> 
> I will endeavor to produce an Indy stile "trimmed" tips files for the
> beginner.  However most of this stuff is too cool to go to waste so I 
> will also produce a comprehensive tips file with all I have gathered 
> so far plus more.

I agree.

I've been following along with this discussion so far, and I think this
Linux tip idea is a really great one. We can implement them exactly as
fortunes files, so we don't need any new applications or anything.
I suspect an rpm to install the fortunes files in the right places would
be handy, though. (Yes, I said files -- I think we should have quite a
few files, divided down by category.)

And we should have a CGI for people to submit new fortunes, preferably
with a set of categories they can choose from. (Somebody volunteered to
write this, right? If not, I can whip one together in about 20 minutes.)

The latest gnome (in the gnome-core package) has a gnome-hint feature,
which integrates motd, fortune, and gnome-specific hints (hints about how
to use the gnome environment). I imagine KDE has something similar (if
so, I believe the hints are KDE-specific? Can somebody answer this?)

I think the trickiest part of this is going to be designing the categories
well, and for each category coming up with a clear and precise enough set
of requirements that it will be crystal clear whether a submission fits
into a given category or not.

Kevin, would you like to take a first stab at a list of categories (quite
small at first, I would think), since you have the most familiarity with
the sort of content we're going to have?

--Roger