<sect1 id="sect-morehelp">
  <title>Sources of  Help</title>

  <para>
    This manual is the most complete source of explanation for
    &gnum; and attempts to describe as
    much of the program as possible. However, this manual cannot
    answer all the possible questions readers may have: the manual is
    not yet finished and there are many situations which cannot be
    explained through a manual. Other sources of information which
    might be helpful to &gnum; users are
    presented below.
  </para>

  <warning>
    <para>
      Several of the sources of information below involve talking
      directly with the people who have created
      &gnum;. These people are volunteers
      who have spend several years working on the program to make it
      useful. They will all be glad to help you
      <emphasis>but</emphasis> only if they decide they want to. They
      are all busy and only volunteer on this project. You can take
      several steps to make these people want to help you.
    </para>

    <para>
      First of all, try to help yourself by reading the existing
      documents. If you have read the documents, others will be much
      more likely to want to answer any questions that
      remain. Secondly, be polite by introducing yourself, thanking
      developers for their hard work and asking your questions
      nicely. Please be aware that the developers all respect each
      other and their users so therefore, while their answers may
      appear brisk or discourteous, they are simply trying to be
      efficient and save time by being curt. Please assume they
      respect you and want to help you, after all they have written a
      program for you to use.
    </para>
  </warning>

    <para>
      <emphasis role="bold">Steps for getting help.</emphasis>
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
            <para>
	        <emphasis role="bold">Read the Manual:</emphasis>
            </para>
            <para>
                First, please look carefully through this manual to
                see if you can answer your own question. This can be
                hard and requires careful thinking but will teach you
                the most.
            </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
            <para>
	        <emphasis role="bold">Read the Web Site:</emphasis>
            </para>
            <para>
                Second, look at the
                &gnum; web site, look on
                the world wide web for explanations using other
                spreadsheets or look for a book on how to use another
                spreadsheet. <xref linkend="sect-morehelp-web"/>
                explains how to access and find information on the web
                site.
            </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
            <para>
	        <emphasis role="bold">Read other Spreadsheet Tutorials:</emphasis>
            </para>
            <para>
                Another useful source of help is the literature
                written for other
                spreadsheets. &gnum; is
                quite similar to a number of other spreadsheets and
                often books, web sites, tutorials and other documents
                which describe how to use other spreadsheets can help
                users understand how to use
                &gnum;. <xref
                linkend="sect-morehelp-books"/> describes other
                spreadsheets for which usage manuals may provide
                useful information.
            </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
            <para>
	        <emphasis role="bold">Send email to the Gnumeric List:</emphasis>
            </para>
            <para>
                The &gnum; project
                maintains an email mailing list which is a way for
                people to send email to all the core developers. <xref
                linkend="sect-morehelp-maillist"/> explains how to
                send email to the gnumeric list and how to read past
                messages including questions and answers which may be
                helpful.
            </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
            <para>
	        <emphasis role="bold">Join the Chat Discussion:</emphasis>
            </para>
            <para>
                The &gnum; project also
                uses an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, also known
                as a `discussion room', in which developers talk to
                each other, and to anyone else, about the
                program. <xref linkend="sect-morehelp-irc"/> explains
                how to join this discussion.
            </para>
        </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>


</sect1>

<sect1 id="sect-morehelp-web">
  <title>Web Resources</title>

  <para>
    The &gnum; project maintains a web
    site with explanations, links and other useful information to
    learn about and use this spreadsheet.
  </para>

  <sect2 id="sect-morehelp-web-gnumericSite">
    <title>The Gnumeric Web Site</title>

    <para>
      The &gnum; web site can be accessed
      by clicking on this <ulink type="http"
      url="http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/">link</ulink>.
      Alternatively, it may be necessary to enter the address directly
      into a web browser. The &gnum;
      project page address is:
<screen>http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/
</screen> 
      It may be necessary to copy the text and paste it into the
      address field.
    </para>

  </sect2>


</sect1>



<sect1 id="sect-morehelp-books">
  <title>Related Manuals</title>

  <para>
    &gnum; strives to mimic the behaviour
    of other spreadsheets so books which explain how to use these
    other spreadsheets will probably be useful to help understand
    &gnum;.
  </para>

  <para>
    The OpenOffice.org spreadsheet named
    <application>Calc</application> is another popular and highly
    functional spreadsheet which provides users with the freedoms
    provided by &gnum; including the
    freedom to access and use the source code of the program
    itself. The documentation for <application>Calc</application> may
    also help explain how to use &gnum;
    and can be accessed through the OpenOffice.org web site at <ulink
    type="http" url="http://www.openoffice.org/">
<uri>
http://www.openoffice.org/
</uri>
    </ulink>.
  </para>

  <para>
    The manuals for other spreadsheets, even those that restrict users
    freedoms in several ways, may help to explain how to use
    &gnum;.
    &gnum; attempts explicitly to behave
    in a manner understandable to users of the Microsoft
    <application>Excel</application> spreadsheet. Because
    <application>Excel</application> has a very large number of users,
    many books have been written explaining how to use that
    spreadsheet. Any local bookstore should have at least a few of
    these books which may help answer any questions.
  </para>

</sect1>


<sect1 id="sect-morehelp-maillist">
  <title>The Mailing List</title>

  <para>
    The &gnum; project maintains a
    mailing list which is a system by which people can send one email
    which gets distributed to everyone who has signed up to read these
    emails. Please understand that this list is used for serious
    discussions about developing this spreadsheet further. Questions
    from users are generally answered when posted to this list but
    simple questions which are answered in the manual may generate the
    simple answer, "Please read the manual." Also, developers
    volunteer any time they take to answer your questions so please be
    polite.
  </para>

  <para>
    The best way to use this resource is first to read the archives
    for the past few months to see if any of the subjects look similar
    to the issue which interests you. It may be that your question has
    just been asked by someone else and a good answer has been
    posted. To access the archives, use a web browser to go to the
    mailing list web page at <ulink type="http"
    url="http://www.gnome.org/">
<uri>
http://www.gnome.org/
</uri>
    </ulink> and then ...
  </para>

  <para>
    If none of the emails recently posted to the mailing list address
    your issue, if you would like clarification to an earlier answer,
    or if you simply want to thank the developers, you are welcome to
    send an email of your own to the list. This simply requires
    writing an email and sending it to
<screen>gnumeric-list@gnome.org
</screen>
    and your posting will eventually get sent to everyone who is
    subscribed to the list. Please select the subject of your email
    carefully to make it easy for everyone to see if they are
    interested in reading and possibly answering your message. For
    example, the subject "I need help" may be true but is ineffective;
    a better subject would be "Help needed with statistical
    regression". Please make it easy for others to give you help.
  </para>

  <para>
    After you have sent your email, there may be an initial delay
    while the moderator of the list, a person who acts as editor,
    reviews your email to see if it is relevant to the
    discussion. This step is required to limit the junk email that
    gets sent out to everyone.

     <note>
       <para>
         Very rarely an email might automatically be discarded if it
         appeared to be a mass junk mailing. If, after a few days,
         your email does not appear in the archives and you don't get
         any response, then re-send your email to the list omitting any
         signatures or other material that might appear to be
         commercial solicitation. A simple, text message is the least
         likely to be discarded by these automatic tools.
       </para>
     </note>

    Once your email is sent to everyone on the list, someone may
    answer you. They may choose to answer you directly, to post a
    response to the list, or to do both. In the hours and days after
    posting, you can check to see if you received email and check the
    list archives, as is explained above, to see if someone answered
    there.
  </para>


</sect1>



<sect1 id="sect-morehelp-irc">
  <title>Internet Chat (IRC)</title>

  <para>
    The GNOME and GIMP projects maintain a series of servers to
    provide a world wide network enabling an Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
    system for discussion on issues related to those projects
    including a discussion channel dedicated to
    &gnum;. This is a system by which
    people can communicate directly with each other by typing lines
    into an IRC client which are then broadcast to everyone listening
    in a particular channel. Unfortunately this manual cannot provide
    a full explanation for how to obtain, install and use an IRC
    client. There are a number of such programs available, many of
    which provide users all the freedoms which
    &gnum; provides and instructions for
    these can be obtained from the world wide web. More information
    and access to such software can easily be obtained by running a
    search in any world wide web search engine for "IRC" and "client"
    and the name of the operating system of the machine which will run
    the software.
  </para>

  <para>
    The &gnum; IRC discussion channel is
    named <literal>#gnumeric</literal> (although the number symbol,
    #, may not be needed) and is hosted on the series of servers
    called <literal>GIMPnet</literal>. The best way to connect to
    GIMPnet is using the IRC server
    <literal>irc.gimp.org</literal>. That hostname points to a variety
    of different servers in the United States. If you live elsewhere,
    after you are connected you can use the chat command
    <literal>/links</literal> to find a server which is closer on
    the internet to your location.
  </para>

  <para>
    If you decide to join the discussion, please be polite, post a
    question or comment and be prepared to wait a little bit for
    someone to address you. Several of the developers are permanently
    connected to the channel and check every half hour or so to see if
    anyone has asked a question but are working on something else in
    the meantime. Your question may be answered right away but asking
    questions using the mailing list may prove to be more efficient
    since it would not require paying attention to the IRC channel
    discussion, even if it ultimately requires longer to obtain an
    answer.
  </para>

</sect1>




