[Gambas-devel] Well, I kept my promise

[Kadaitcha Man]

2009/12/9 Benoît Minisini <gambas at ...1...>:

>> 1) The Gambas prawn/shrimp looks really immature. I recommend a new
>> and more technical logo, such as, erm, anything other than a prawn or
>> shrimp.
>
> Mmm... Something like a foot print, a green dragon, or worse a penguin? :-)

lol - the only penguin I like is the fat one with the googly eyes. Attached.

> I think you don't understand the need of the wiki: I made it to allow people
> from everywhere to *enter* the information.
>
> Then, I don't find that my last wiki style sheet is ugly. I find it pretty
> nice. It is almost copied on the old wikipedia style sheet. Well, it is mainly
> a matter of taste.

It's not just the style, Benoit. It's the lack of control and being
tied into how the wiki expects things to be done. Why should I be
forced to type "=TypeWriter=", requiring 12 keystrokes, when I can
achieve exactly the same thing with a single flick of the wrist and a
click of a mouse button?

> If you need sort of a menu on the left page, I think it could be easily added
> to the wiki. Like in wikipedia.

Oh, I think you misunderstand. I don't need it, nor do I "want" it. I
just put the idea out there for discussion and suggestion. At the end
of the day, I don't believe the over-arching design decisions should
be mine. It was just something to generate discussion... do we need a
side panel or not? Perhaps we do, perhaps it needs to be a frame.
Perhaps none of those. I have no fixed ideas on how the help text
should appear to users, with the exception that it should be clear,
succinct, easy to find and at least somewhat pleasurable to browse.

> I don't think that *.tar.gz files can be put in the wiki, but it should be a
> feature easy to add too.
>
> But if I don't find the wiki ugly, I admit it is a bit arcane.

lol - you just reminded me of a cartoon I saw many years ago. There
was a skinflint king who needed a new chef but the king was worried
that the chefs he'd interviewed would taste the food too much, thereby
costing him too much money. Some guy with a face like a Grouch Marx
mask turned up. He had blue and red striped trousers, a gaudy green
jacket, one hobnail boot on one foot and a sandal on the other. The
king hired him...

Because the guy's taste was up his arse.

Let me know if I need to explain it to you.

Ok, you like the wiki, but you are better at writing interpreters and
compilers than I am. You do the interpreters and compilers and I'll do
the writing.

> The main reason is: the information is usually entered in one place only, and
> follow the component structure (component->class->symbol).

The component structure is part of the problem. Human brains are not
organised in a component->class->symbol structure.

> This way, a contextual help can be easily implemented in the IDE. But for
> beginners, I admit that it is difficult to find the information needed to do a
> specific task.

I'm far from a beginner in terms of being a developer and I can't use
the documentation. That said, if contextual help is a requirement of
yours that you'd like to see implemented then I'm happy to include
whatever hooks you need. Just specify them.

> The solution there is writing the same information, but with a better
> organization. But it couldn't be done before that information was written
> first, and I have never had the time to do that myself.

I'm happy to do that too, Benoit, but I need artistic license to do it
the way your users want it done, which is not necessarily the way
that's convenient for you.

There's a very important point hidden in there. Gambas is maturing;
it's certainly come a very long way since I first saw it in v1. The
point? Your user base is also maturing and it is demanding something
of you that you can't reasonably provide on your own, that being help
text and documentation that is a pleasure to read. That isn't a
criticism, by the way; it says far more about the fruits of your own
and your core team's extraordinary efforts to build a brilliant BASIC
tool with GUI support and an IDE to boot.

> And finally if you need an offline documentation, we can imagine a periodic
> process of dumping the wiki inside a directory, as I did before for Gambas 2.

Let me ask you a serious question. In the last 12 months, how much
editing of the wiki has been done by Gambas users who are not part of
the core development team?

If the answer is not a substantial amount then all the reasons you
just put forward for using the wiki are made void and the only real
conclusion is that the wiki helps you save time, nothing else.

> In short, I don't see in your example anything that cannot be done inside the
> wiki with a few modifications.
>
> But I may be wrong.

I genuinely believe that this is not a case of someone being right and
someone being wrong. From what you've said, I get the impression that
the wiki gives you, that is you, yourself, a lot of benefits, which
means the wiki is right for you. However, speaking as a developer, the
wiki is terrible, and speaking as a writer, it is even worse.

If you support me in going to the user list and getting their direct
input on the documentation design then I'll write the documentation
the way the users want to see it. You can link to the wiki and to the
new design as well, thereby letting people choose. I reckon your
webstats will tell you what the right decision is.

Genuine regards,
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