Rant Re Rev Documentation

[Sarah Reichelt]

Hi Tim,

I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure I agree with your  
idea of the what the docs are for. I see them as a reference guide,  
not a tutorial. For learning Revolution, you need other resources:  
the built-in tutorials, the scripting conference stacks, Dan's book,  
this list and the other resources available on the net.

I too was a long-time HyperCard user, but I didn't learn HyperTalk by  
using the HyperCard manuals. I learnt from Dan Shafer's book  
"HyperTalk Programming" and from the HyperCard list. The docs were  
only used as a reference to check the syntax of a command I knew I  
wanted to use or to look up the variations of a command.

When I converted to Revolution, I read the list of entries in the  
Transcript dictionary, mainly so I could get a feel for what sort of  
things were available to me. Many I already knew, and some where  
completely new to me, so I stopped to read them, but the main object  
at that stage was to give myself an idea of what commands I could  
use, if I needed them in the future.

Then I did all the tutorials and then put together a test stack where  
I wrote code snippets that tried out some of the new commands that I  
knew I would use immediately.

Now I realize that there are many different learning styles (there  
are people on this list far more qualified to talk about that than I  
am), but I just wanted to let you know that it IS possible to learn  
Revolution from the available material.

To use a weak analogy, it is as if you are annoyed because a French  
dictionary is not teaching you how to speak French :-)

Cheers,
Sarah