Adium "Book" - Opinions on Writing Style

[Michael Crilly]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the input.

I understand the differences between a service, an account and a protocol,
but I'm trying to aim the language at a complete newbie, not programmers and
system administrators. That is why I've defined AIM, GTalk, etc, as a
"service", because that's how a consumer sees it. I hope this clears that
up.

I mentioned Quicksilver, because your Wiki mentions it. I'm simply
paraphrasing your existing documentation and "spicing" it up.

I'll mention the Address Book automation you put forward. Cheers.

"Brillante" is Italian.

You can charge for an Open Source piece of software, you're absolutely
right. I'll adjust the wording to be a bit more accurate to avoid confusion.

Cheers Peter!

Regards,

Mike.


On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Peter Hosey <boredzo at adium.im> wrote:

> On May 15, 2010, at 05:19:57, Michael Crilly wrote:
> >
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2664389/PDFs/Adium/Documentation%20Project/About%20Adium.pdf
>
> > •     It supports a HUGE range of services (or protocols, as we geeks
> call them).
>
> > Supported Services
> > What do we mean by a “service”? Well, by “service” we mean protocol. A
> protocol is like a language, and Adium uses these languages to talk with
> multiple accounts like MSN, GTalk, AIM, IQC and many more.
>
> You're confusing three things.
>
> A service is a system on which users with accounts on the service can chat
> with other users with accounts on the service.
>
> The protocol is the means (or “language”) by which the client software
> (Adium) communicates with the service.
>
> Accounts are the service's means of identification of users, containing
> both login credentials (so that users cannot impersonate each other) and
> profile information (so that users can find out, to some extent, who others
> are).
>
> Services (MSN, GTalk, etc.) are not accounts, nor are they protocols.
>
> Also, you have a typo in ICQ there.
>
> > its self.
>
> itself.
>
> > This is a level of integration found in high-quality applications, like
> Apple’s Mail, iCal and iChat, as well as Quicksilver.
>
> OOH, BURN!
>
> I don't think we need to mention Quicksilver there at all (negatively or
> otherwise). The way I read this PDF, its target audience won't know what
> Quicksilver is.
>
> > Adium has an anti-annoying system that allows you to merge multiple
> addresses into a single person - in this case, your best friend - and as
> such, you add people to your contact list, not addresses. Smooth.
>
> You may want to mention that it will do this automatically for anybody
> whose IM usernames you've added to Address Book.
>
> > Brillante!
>
> Assuming that this is in Spanish, you've missed some punctuation:
>
> ¡Brillante!
>
> > Adium is an open source project, which means it’s developed by loads of
> people from all around the world. It also means it’s completely free, as in,
> it doesn’t cost anything to buy!
>
> Well, not really. Adium is free, but these two facts are not connected. It
> is certainly possible to charge for open-source software.
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/attachments/20100515/4f8a20a0/attachment-0002.html>