Talk:Tutorial - Editing an Existing File

I'm beginning to understand the concerns about repeating stuff in different sections of the manual - in Tutorials, Foundations and Reference for example. That said, I think these tutorials are a special case. The purpose here is to guide the new user through a few common tasks, giving just enough guidance and information to complete the task. This necessarily requires repeating information from the Reference section. I don't think this is a bad thing. We can link to more detailed and complete information from the tutorial, but I don't think we should do so in the body of the tutorial. We don't want to break up the flow of the tutorial, or tempt the learner to hop around the manual. Instead I'd suggest that each tutorial end with a "Where to go from here" section that provides links to pages that provide more details on the topics covered. - Bill

I agree with Bill here, no links in a tutorial -- it should be freestanding/self-contained; a "where to go from here" section at the end would be good. -- Ed
 * Gale 21Nov11: Although I take the point, I disagree and we were not completely following this even before I included inline links in some text I added today. I don't think the extra links at the end are totally redundant, but to ban inline links from Tutorials means removing links from other tutorials. This also clashes with policy in Reference pages. Inline links should encourage exploration, especially on re-reading. If users need help on using an HTML manual e.g. using the browser's search function, this should be a separate page.
 * Peter 22Nov11: I agree with Gale here.  I use inline links in the tutorials I have developed and would be loath to lose them.  The (only slightly sophisticated) user is quite capable of following the link(s) in a new tab or a new page, thus retaining the original tutorial.  The manual can be hard enough to find your way around anyway, so anything we can do to encourage further exploration by the reader is fine in my book.
 * Ed 17Apr12: I think I misstated my opinion above. I still think that a tutorial should be fully self-contained with no links required to be followed; however, I think that links-to-material which goes into more detailed explanation of tangential material is OK.