use-revolution Digest, Vol 18, Issue 24

[Mark Smith]

But the online docs that are present (as far as I know) in every  
distribution of Revolution and Dreamcard are the manuals...

Many people, including me have had trouble finding what they were  
looking for, but then it's a big language. Familiarising myself with  
the various sections of the docs, ie. not just the dictionary, has been  
of great benefit to me, and I recommend doing it. I don't say that the  
docs are perfect, by any means, but they are comprehensive - witness  
how many times an enquiry on this list is dealt with by someone  
replying 'check out <whatever> in the docs'. I've often found that that  
was all I needed to help with the difficulties that I've had.

I long for a book like Winkler and Kamins HyperTalk book, where every  
single command and function in the language is explained in detail,  
with a nice clear example of it's use, but then Transcript is orders of  
magnitude broader and deeper than HyperTalk, and such a book would be a  
truly colossal undertaking. In the mean time, the provided docs  
actually do cover everything, though sometimes sparsely, and in those  
cases, one of the many kindly and knowledgeable people here will almost  
certainly be willing to oblige.

I personally sprung for the printed docs (which are only the online  
docs printed out) as I like to browse at random, and It's been well  
worth it for me.

Cheers,

Mark


>> M> I'll reiterate my call for a set of manuals.
>>
>> I take it you have some objection to ordering them?
>>
>> http://secure.runrev.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc? 
>> Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MANLPRNT&Category_Code=REVNBOOK&Store_Code=SD 
>> REBWLP
>
> The "objection" I have is to paying for access to basic reference
> material.  I'm not asking for printed manuals.  I'm not aware of any
> products that have printed docs included any more.  However, they have
> electronic docs included.  This weekend I went through the web site
> tutorial pdf's and the documentation stack trying to find the info. I
> was looking for.  Unfortunately that search was unsuccessful.  A few
> tutorial movies, some random access help and an online user group is
> not the same thing.
>
> While it's obvous that most of you have grown comfortable to this
> setup, it is hardly helpful to new users (regardless of their past
> experience with tool x, y, z, or w), and it makes it harder to
> persuade clients and the powers-that-be that the tool is mature when
> it lacks something that is generally taken for granted.  "Sure, we can
> get people up to speed - uh, but we're going to have to do it in sort
> of a trial-and-error sort of fashion because there isn't any sort of
> theme-organized language reference or design guide...well, you could
> cough up another Benjamin for printed docs (which I'm assuming are
> complete and applicable for the current version), or there's this
> third party book for $40."
>
> Since we're in the mode of trying to decide if we're going to shell
> out for one or several corporate licenses, or put RR in the "wait and
> see" category and continue with the plan to convert our existing
> stacks to other environments, which sort of reduces the future value
> of RR to us, the little things such as this make a difference.  It's a
> much more awkward sell.
>
> On the good news side of the coin, it didn't hurt that on a Sunday I
> was able to crank out a question on this latest issue and get a quick
> series of replies.  The activity level on this list is somewhat
> encouraging.
> -- 
> On the first day, God created the heavens and the Earth
> On the second day, God created the oceans.
> On the third day, God put the animals on hold for a few hours,
>    and did a little diving.
> And God said, "This is good.
>
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> End of use-revolution Digest, Vol 18, Issue 24
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