Revdocs on a wiki

[Timothy Miller]

>You missed the point. MY comment was marked as a rant, not yours!
>
>On Oct 27, 2005, at 8:29 PM, Timothy Miller wrote:
>
>>Sorry you think it was a rant.
>
>

Oops. Well, yours didn't look like a rant, but mine did, at least to 
me. How bout we both take a free pass, then.

I think it's time for me to bow out of this topic in any case. I'm 
really in way over my head, in terms of my expertise.

But wait...

One final comment. Many will be happy to know it's not about wikis.

In an off-list exchange with one of the subscribers, I got the 
impression that most of the list subscribers are lurkers, and most of 
the lurkers are newbies. He/she said, "I wish the newbies would ask 
really basic questions more often, like, 'What is a button?'"

When I taught myself hyperCard, I literally started with "What is a 
button?" Double-clicking on the button really made me nervous. Then 
it was, "What is a script?" It was slow going for me. I struggled 
with if - else - end for a week before I could use them effectively. 
I hardly knew what the internet was, back then. I didn't have access. 
But with Danny Goodman's book in one hand, the keyboard in the other, 
I figured it out. Many thousands (how many, really, I wonder? 
Millions, maybe?) did the same thing. Danny Goodman's book was rather 
expensive, and I had to buy at least one revision, maybe two. That 
was a serious barrier to me.

(I should add, learning HC was easier for me than it would have been 
for most newbies. I had taught myself Basic, a few years before, on 
my Atari 64, and actually wrote a rather complex application.)

Do we all agree that it's harder to teach oneself Dreamcard, not to 
mention Revolution, than it was with HC? And now there's no Danny 
Goodman book. (But everyone should buy Dan's book!)

A hyperlinked indexed reference of some kind would probably be more 
comfortable and effective than Danny Goodman's book was. That wasn't 
technically possible at the time. It is now.

It seems possible that such an electronic reference could be equally 
attractive and effective for a big range of users, from 
"What-is-a-button?" types, all the way up to seasoned developers. 
Good as the new version of Rev's docs might be, it's hard to imagine 
that they could optimally address the needs of such a broad spectrum 
of users.

I know little about the Runtime Revolution company, or its prospects, 
except I sometimes hear it's short on resources. And I've gotten the 
impression that Rev is not catching on as fast as early enthusiasts 
had hoped. Doesn't Rev need to become loved and needed by hundreds of 
thousands of really green new users, if it is to survive and prosper?


Nuff said.


Tim