Cash Flow report vs. Income Statement

[Ken Heard]

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Phil Longstaff wrote:
> Any contributions that users want to make to the documentation will be gratefully accepted.

I am prepared to discuss contributing, especially when and how.  At the
moment however I am fully committed.  I have nevertheless spent a good
part of my career writing manuals to explain complex subjects geared to
people with the intelligence level of the average 12 year old.

I have also found that the technical experts do not make the best
editors and vice versa.  In the context of GnuCash the code writers are
the technical experts; and the editors are people like me do cannot
write code but want to use the fruits of the code writers' efforts and
need good instructions in order to do so.

One issue to discuss is the relationship between the code writers and
the manual writers.  They obviously need to work together, but how?

What I have seen on line about Linux manuals, howtos, etc., pays great
attention to the physical format of such documents, but very little on
content format.  For instance before I start editing, I would like to
hear from the code writers about the following:

1.  The purpose or objects of the GnuCash -- these are already stated in
several places but could do with editing -- and the intended users.  One
size rarely fits all.

2.  Who are the intended audiences for the documentation.  There are
likely several: the users and the code writers obviously, but even these
two groups may be segmented.

3.  From a discussion of 1 and 2, the content format can be developed.
I can off-hand think of the following three documents, or groups of
documents:

a. A basic primer on double entry bookkeeping.

b. Howtos for the average 12 year old user. (I would use my 12 year old
grandson as the prototype user.)

c. A reference manual for the code writers and advanced users.

As discussions about the foregoing progress and we get to some pilot
editing done, rearrangements of how the various features and options
will be shown to be desirable.  A good place to start with such is the
scheduled transactions tab, which I found very difficult to understand.
 At this point what the editors find is fed back to the coders.

Phil, you and I have already tossed back and forth some ideas about the
use of account codes instead of names for account selection.  If you or
anybody else is working on them, perhaps my editing of the changes
thereby required in the relevant documentation could serve as a sort of
pilot editing project.

Regards, Ken Heard

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