Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: I don't need another graduate degree

Author:Greg The A110 Guy
Posted:7/28/1999; 7:00:36 PM
Topic:The Doctor is In
Msg #:8857 (In response to 8849)
Prev/Next:8856 / 8858

Hiya Russ,

I'll agree to disagree with some of what you've said. I'd like to counter your opinion with some of my own. I do NOT intend this as a flame, but as a discussion to help provide information to aim the direction of the docs that are yet to be written... Oh yea, I'm quite pleased to see Matt will be involved with new docs :-)

I believe The Book is philosophically in line with much of the O'Reilly line of books. Few of them (IMHO) are intended as strictly being for the complete beginner (Learning Perl -- the Llama book -- being a notable exception). I do often see them used as references when someone has mastered some of the basicsof topicX, and is trying to dig deeper -- the Camel book (the big Perl reference) is intended for a completely different audience than the Llama book. O'Reilly does wield some editorial control of the content, so worrying about Matt's writing might not be the only issue at work there. (Since I wasn't involved in writing The Book at all, this is simply my own fabrication of my own little fantasy-world. The real events may have been very different, and really, it's irrelevant anyway now.)

Matt clearly stated in The Book's preface (p xvii) that he wrote the book HE "wished to read." I was initially disappointed with parts of it when I was trying to understand some of the basics of UserTalk and Frontier. Now that I have moved forward, many of those same parts have been saviors when wrestling with other tasks. The Book is a marvelous reference. I have purchased two copies of it myself. Emmanuel's "Frontier Newbie Toolbox" has been a fantastic resource in my journey. I would not like to see either disappear, and both have been very helpful in their own way to me.

Different folks learn differently. I'm quite sure Matt's aware of this, since he has taught before. There are many Frontier users who would prefer to read Matt's prose. There are many who might appreciate a highly structured approach, a la Info Mapping. Cool. Being able to have choices is very good. Viva la difference! There are some folks who need a human there to help them move forward. Possible, but I think you have to pony up big bucks for the really big Frontier license for this :-) I'm glad for the options available, and look forward to a Matt-like treatment of the mR stuff.

While I'm wishing, I would love to see more diagrams (flowcharts, relationships, and so on) included in any of the docs -- Matt's, the docserver stuff, and all the tutorials. Screenshots sometimes don't tell the same story, and sometimes prose can be less-clear than a picture. Emmanuel has mentioned some diagrams he has made for himself that might be very helpful in understanding some of the conceptual underpinnings of Frontier/UserTalk. Sometimes not seeing the big picture can really hamstring things. Scratchings on a napkin can often be just the thing, so polished pictures =! only way.

Hey, I'd also love to see a Buck's story about the napkin sketching that must happen there, while I'm rambling here... :-)

Some possible choices for Frontier diagrams off the top of my head:

1) rendering of a webpage (classic style, rendering to the ODB, and mR versions, as well as Matt's .wsf tricks)

2) how and where all the pieces of mR fit together

3) various GDB configurations (basic, advanced, and customized -- I really have no clue here, since I'm just poking at them right now...)

Finally, the annotated docserver is VERY cool (wasn't there something like this from Xerox?). This could be a killer app that helps push other folks vision of on-line docs further. But I want a paper-based book to read in the sunshine, too :-)

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