Recently on IRC some people have been asking some questions that have been mentioned in the forums (but more of in random replies than anything else). Perhaps a FAQ should be written that covers areas like upgrading, installing and advanced options. Is anyone up to the challenge, to write such a thing?
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At HydrogenAudio.org, there was a community maintained wiki, this seemed quite effective. If one wanted to update a wiki with information, they needed to be granted access, if I recall correctly.
Personally, I adopted a habit of updating my original post with new information I felt pertinent, especially in threads where I posited a question.
Limits are for people with no imagination.
We can use the one rmccue setup
http://cubegames.net/development/irc
iLike Macs, iPwn, However you put it... Apple is better ^_^
"Claiming that your operating system is the best in the world because more people use it is like saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world..."
I'd be honored to write an official FAQ/Guide for PortableApps.com. Anyone familiar with my posts knows they're not short, but also they tend to be informative and complete. Also, my casual forum writing isn't my best work. I can also write like a story (prose) and I can write technical instruction; while neither is at a professional level, I think I'm alright at it and I do enjoy writing. And of course I love what y'all do here.
For a reference I would say that I wrote the FAQ/Sticky for GTA San Andreas over on GameFAQs (under account name DXNathan), and it stayed sticky for a couple years, but I had it un-stickied as it grew outdated. I haven't been up there in a while, and I'm not even sure if they approved my un-sticky request, but I made the request after they stopped purging and moved to archiving. I can't access the forum from here, so I can't drop a link, but if you search for the game (PC version) and go into the game board (not the social board, if it's still open) and just go through the topics. If you have an account that's high enough level to search, search the forum for "sticky candidate". (I made a few and was hoping to make a more official topic title, but that one (#3 I think) people liked and voted to be made sticky.
I can come up with some ideas on my own, but if y'all come up with some basic topics to cover, I can fill in from there. And like I did with the San Andreas one, we don't have to accept the first version. I fully expect to post a 'candidate' and have it picked apart, and then revise it for another go-around.
could ya make one in pdf as well and make it downloadable? Maybe it could be offered as an "official" guide and allow someone something as reference while "offline"?
I started writing it the other day in Notepad++. I'm not real big on the HTML formatting on this site; I'll need either an editor or a crash course, but the latter shouldn't be too hard.
I actually got a little discouraged; I wrote a couple paragraphs and said to myself, "you know, these people don't like real long posts". An assumption more than anything, but it got me wondering - would a written document be better, or just a quick Q&A? The former is more natural to me, but the latter would be quicker to read, and trickier to write.
Here is what I have so far:
PortableApps.com FAQ Candidate 1--------------------------------------
PortableApps.com Platform (intro)
-What it is (and isn't)
-Who makes it (and who doesn't)
-How to use it
Portable Applications
-What we offer
-What we can offer (Free vs. OSS)
-What you can do on your own
-Problematic software
I. PortableApps.com Platform (PAP)
Have you ever wanted a better way to work with computers on the go? At home you have your computer and your programs set up just the way you want them, but then when you use any other computer that isn't yours, you have to deal with strange settings, and in some cases, your actions may disrupt the other computer, such as logging a friend out of Gmail so you can log in. With the prices of USB flash drives (also known as thumb drives or jump drives) and their capacity rising, it makes sense to run applications from the flash drive. This is not always directly possible, as installing software buries settings deep within the Windows registry and creates various associations. Enter PortableApps.com.
What is it?
The center of the PortableApps.com Platform is the
Any suggestions? Should I continue on this road or take another approach? As for the "table of contents" bit, it's just a guide for me. As I write it, I'll decide what's more important and whatnot.
I'm just afraid it'll be too long and those that would be most helped by it wouldn't want to take the time to read all that. On the other hand, if JTH wants someone to write up a compelling manual to offer to hardware manufacturers to pass along with the drives or something, I'm fully capable of writing, say, "PortableApps for Dummies!".
As for PDF, I think AbiWord can write PDF, but anything can read .TXT, so maybe I'll throw it up on my GooglePages site in multiple formats (say, .TXT, .ABW (AbiWord), .PDF) in addition to posting it here.
Koompozer does HTML. HTML is a fair language. Always close your tags though.
OpenOffice exports (last I knew) overly bloated PDF's, but they do work. Scribus is directly for PDF's
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
I'm intending to, when I get time for it, make a whole big project out of it, covering everything I can think of, as a Wink project (with a menu thing so you can select the area you want to, view the screencasts etc.) I'm hoping to be able to do it soon, at the latest really in a couple of months when I've finished this term and my mid-year Year 12 exams.
Things to cover: installing, upgrading, uninstalling, disabling splash screens, and separately, eventually, a guide to making portable apps (an extension of the guerilla field guide)
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“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1