Another Area For Document Development

[Judy Perry]

FWIW, this is one of the areas I'm trying to tackle in my project.  The
solution I'm considering currently (which is geared strictly towards
nonprogrammers) is to provide sample stacks with sample scripted goodies
(ala Hypercard's 'Sample buttons' & 'Sample fields' stacks).  I'm leaning
towards this method for the following reasons:

1.  People hate reading manuals/documentation (it can be confusing and
frustrating for the very reasons you outlined even IF typing in 'tab
buttons' revealed anything).

2.  The documentation isn't visual, so even providing a cookbook script
doesn't tell you how to go about implementing it in a meaningful way
(especially if you are a nonprogrammer).

3.  Sample stacks put the items in both a visual and  contextual frame of
reference.  People can look at the item, look at the script, and observe
the output without having to look at a page of code and then try
copy-pasting or typing things in and hoping one got everything together
where it was supposed to be).

4.  Sample stacks provide for code reuse and modification -- the latter
encourages the new programmer to experiment with the scaffolding of
keeping the original goodie intact.

Thoughts?

Judy

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Dave Calkins wrote:

> Using tap buttons, developing a simple database, developing simple web
> management / browser, using images... These are topics that I think
> need to be addressed in the documents. People should not have to ask
> the forum about how to add and work with tab buttons.
>
> Thoughts?