Documentation & Books

[Dan Shafer]

Chipp Walters swears by printed version of the docs. He peruses it in 
his leisure. I prefer lighter leisure reading fare (like cosmology and 
consciousness and quantum physics...heh heh) but Chipp's one of the 
best Transcript coders out there, so there may be some value to this 
notion.

dan

On Jul 3, 2004, at 4:31 AM, Mark Smith wrote:

> I, too, have used  HyperTalk extensively for many years, in many 
> projects, though I am not a professional or trained programmer, by any 
> means. I also have had my difficulties with the Rev docs, for all the 
> reasons others have put forward here. However, I finally stumped up 
> for the printed docs, and started simply browsing through them, pretty 
> much at random. It's been a revelation! I've discovered all sorts of 
> things I didn't know I could do, and all sorts of better ways of doing 
> things I knew I could do. As a result, I've begun to be able to make 
> better use of the online docs when actually working, since I have a 
> much better idea of where to look, because I have a better idea of the 
> breadth of possibilities in Rev.
>
> I know that the printed docs are the same as the online docs, but the 
> ability to simply flick through and see what catches the eye has made 
> all the difference for me. Perhaps this has to do with being someone 
> who learns best by simply jumping in, screwing things up and then 
> gradually working out what I'm doing wrong.
>
> My opinion of the docs now is that they are generally very clear and 
> helpful, though not quite up to the standards of the great Winkler and 
> Kamins HyperTalk 2.0 language reference, where every keyword, command, 
> constant and function was beautifully explained with a complete 
> handler demonstrating it's use...though given the far greater scope of 
> Rev., this may not be possible, since some things are the  subject of 
> whole books themselves...eg, RegEx, XML, TCP/IP etc.
>
> So as someone who has struggled with the docs, I can heartily 
> recommend the printed versions, as well as monitoring this list, which 
> regularly throws up gems from the kind generosity of it's many 
> contributors, including those who simply ask questions.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark Smith
>
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