Re: Rate It <suggestion>

[Thomas Walter <tw@mail.itreff.de>]

******    message to minivend-users from Thomas Walter <tw@mail.itreff.de>     ******

mikeh@minivend.com wrote:
> 
> I am a bit dismayed about people's opinion of the documentation, which
> I have spent quite a bit of effort on over the years. But I have been
> listening and do know that it doesn't seem to be what people want. I am
> thinking about getting a professional to do a real manual and then sell
> a CD-ROM with a manual and a CGI user interface to MiniVend.

Hello Mike...
You do not have to be dismayed about other people&#180;s opinion of the
documentation. The problem is that it is hard to write a documentation
if you know what to write (uhm - this sounds a little silly ;-)... What
I want to say that the docs could be much better if newbies (like I am)
send comments and describe where they have problems understanding the
docu.

I also had some problems understanding it at the beginning, because I am
not a perlie and sometimes it is very short or a little bit confusing
(e.g. you write that MV-tags look like [...] and suddenly it looks like
<pre MV=...></pre> without saying why or why not ;).

I manage it like many others: using the demos, the list (very
excessive), some long nights and a little part of my brain (some people
say that this little part is all I have - but that is something
completely different...). 

And in the meantime I even understand the docs (okay - I understand more
parts every day) and use it as a reference.

Perhaps the newbies and the professionals on this list should sit
together and write something like a "user manual" - as a gift to you and
the MV-community (btw: you will be able to add more and more features
while others do the hard work of writing docs :).
The "user manual" should be more like a "howto" describing more details
of how MV works and how you do this or that.

     Balu

PS: This was my original message that started a nice mail-exchange with
Birgitt:

----- snipp -----
While talking about the docs...
[... shortened ...]
So I started to read the docs - and I dont know if it is hard for me to
understand, because my mother-tongue is german or because the docs are
not so good (nonono - I dont want to say that it is bad, but... ;-).

[... shortened ...]

More examples in the docu would be great... "How a tag is used,
why,...".

Okay these are my few thoughts about the docu...
     rgds
     Balu
[... shortened ...]
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