On 2/24/10, Joep Suijs <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Matt, > > > It's just that we now have a starterguide and also a tutorial book. Do > > we need two books? > This is discussed before, but anyway: I think we need three books: > - the tutorial book (which has numerous, independent chapters that > describe in detail both hardware and software of a specific > application. > - a starterguide, that takes people by the hand and show various > aspects of JAL to create an overview, gets them up to speed. > - a reference guide, covering all aspects of jal (and the core of > jallib if possible) in a complete way and with examples, tips and > explanation of the core and related tricks.
I don't want to dissapoint anyone, but the style above is used by the Xilinx/Altera for FPGA documentation. Being involved in a hardware project (and never using before non Altera neither Xilinx FPGA's) I've discovered that reading and getting the whole picture about using FPGA (only from the hardware perspective) is very difficult. Having so many documentation written in different styles (because the writting experience, age, perspective about the life, and so on, makes the writting style) will be a reading challenge for the user, even greater than it was for the writter. For example, for my eyes, some parts of the existing tutorial is puerile. However, for a guy who never did an electronic project before may be very interesting watching to the pictures. How can be done in a right way then? Like an editor do. Starting with defining a good table of contents and then calling for papers. Every person interested to contribute may write a chapter or a part of a chapter. However should be a chief architect which should manage the whole book, should be references which will search for mistakes or even sillies, and so on. BTW, a book must be written by hand and mind. A collection of programs, ideeas, schematics may not be a book, that's why writting a good book is difficult. It's much difficult if other language than native one is being used. Since writting a book is so difficult, after is finished the author (or authors) will probably not let it free (believe me a good book can't be written in a short time) I'm not interested for writting a book, right now am struggling understanding the repository stuff and playing with my stuff, however that was my two cent opinion, take it or not. Vasile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jallib" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jallib?hl=en.
