Ok, so reactions...
admin wrote:Okay, we all want to make XY a success, me to become a millionaire, and you to have XY development go on and not stop because Donald has to spent time in a day job.
Yep, although to be honest, maybe it doesn't relate to XY but I wouldn't mind being a millionaire myself as well
admin wrote:But, now comes a little but important point: I *think* a newbie (and potential new customer) that finds his/her way to XYwiki during the first days of her evaluation time, might probably suffer from an instant information shock a find herself standing in front of an unsurpassable documentation Kilimanjaro. WOW! I just wanted to manage my files, not to go back to school!
hmm.. not sure I completely agree with you here. Yes, to the newcomer it can look like a gigantic thing, but is that really a bad thing? I've come across such situations over the years, and it's true that a first reaction might be "Dear God, that's too much!"
First off, let me say that this is always better than opening the help, only to find two pages that don't say nothing at all - or not having any kind of help at all. Especially for applications that aren't
just obvious. And I do mean "just", like notepad. No help for notepad is fine. But for a "real" text editor, no help is bad, very bad.
An help file that says nothing might even be worse.
Anyways, I don't think the solution would be to call it a "For Advanced Users" documentation, it's like saying "Restricted To Better Users Than You", in a way, or in my mind it could, at least. I would rather suggest that, and it's true the wiki is probably lacking in that department, more newbie-friendly pages/sections be added/created.
To tell the truth, I've been thinking about things like that for quite some time already, but time isn't always there to help...
I had thought of things like:
- having a page that would list all those other pages, like a "section"
- there would be an "Introduction to XY", using screenshots it would help the new user find its mark and start using XY quickly. Somewhat similar to what ugus did with his XY tutorial blog in a way...
- there would be "mini-tutorials" (not the best word for it I think...) on how to achieve certain tasks the most efficiently way with XY. A way to present features, ways/ideas/examples on how to use them, etc which could be especially useful for those who don't know XY - or how certain features are called
....
but forced to admit I never really went any further than
one page, though i thought about a few more, started to gather some info/write some ideas, but again, me and time don't appear to meet often, or something like that.
admin wrote:Various postings here suggested that XYplorer is a world to discover, that you have to take your time to get into it, etc. Well, I personally dislike software that is like that! I do not want to creep into the weird mind of some genius developer and to bend my ways to fit into a new and strange landscape.
I think it got it wrong, and I think you're mixing together two things that don't fall under the same "category". XY is a world to discover, that's true. That's also a great thing, because it means that there's a "surprisingly flat learning curve" to it.
I think various postings here suggested that, and not that you had to take time to get into it. Unless by "get into it" you mean "know everything or close about it".
Let me use an example : text editor. It's very easy to make one that's very intuitive, and people can start using it & make the most of it within seconds. It's called notepad.
Now take a look at [your favorite text editor here, which should read EditPad Pro
]. It is just as simple to start using as notepad can be, people can start it up & begin to use it within seconds as well. But to get into it, and discover how to make the most of it, that will take time.
And it's good! It means you'll find out about the very easy yet powerful searches you can do, or the quick ones using selection and Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down, the conversion it can do for you, the sorting or deleting duplicate lines, the fact that you can use rectangular selection or choose exactly or the cursor should look!
All kinds of things that needs time to be learned, and a documentation, but when it's done you just enjoy using that application even more because you realize how great it is and how much time it saves you. Even better is when you keep finding out new things about it after years of use, makes you fall in love all over again
Of course I might be wrong, I've been using XY every day for a few years now so I've gotten used to it & know how it works, but I still believe it's pretty easy, simple and natural to start using it. But I don't expect a newbie to know how to "fully" use the Catalog or do a Rich Operation just like that, because those are things you cannot just know, or guess.
Even more with XY-only features. (And it happens that there are a few of those
)
Actually, I'm not sure why it does that. Made a few changes/tried different things, it always does it.