On Fri, Oct 05 2012, Craig Earls wrote: > After languishing for longer than I am happy to admit, I am getting > back into the manual. I have the same problem now that brought me to > a dead stop several months ago: the overall structure. > > Ledger is incredibly complex, and, frankly, I am at a loss on how to > really approach it correctly. Some parts of the current manual are > tutorial in nature, other parts are list of command options. They > don't flow together and it isn't even clear to me where I should look > to find anything in particular. So I beg you to give me some > suggestions to help break through this block. > > Also, there are many, many entries in the lists of options/cmmands > that say FIX THIS ENTRY. Because I don't have a decent understanding > of some of the more arcane ones. If you see one that you understand > please submit an entry to me.
I think some of the sections might be a little overloaded right now: the "Transactions" section in particular has a *whole* lot of information that I wouldn't necessarily expect to be found under "Transactions". For instance, the "Journal Format" node is under "Keeping a Journal", yet metadata isn't mentioned until "Transactions/Metadata". I would have looked to "Journal Format" to explain metadata, or at least mention its syntax. There are also multiple sections on currency and commodity, some describing concepts, some describing formats, and others describing command options, with quite a bit of overlap. There are several other issues like this, that might make the manual a little confusing at first read. Don't get me wrong, this is a huge amount of work and I'm *very* glad someone's doing it! Everything we need to know is in there, it could probably just use some re-organization. Generally I think there should be a clear distinction between a few types of content: "concepts/tutorials", "journal format", and "command options". Obviously there will be overlap and crosslinking, but it seems like we might want conceptual "howto" sections -- what is double-entry accounting, structuring accounts, working with currencies, keeping virtual accounts, budgeting -- up front. I strongly feel that "Ledger Format" should be a top-level node, with subnodes for things like commenting, metadata, virtual accounts, etc. I'm embarrassed to say I only discovered recently that I was still reading the 2.X manual, so I'm not completely familiar with the new one. If you think it would be helpful, I'd be happy to spend a little time on more concrete suggestions for re-organization. Thanks again for your work! As others have said, a complete manual is nearly as important as having the program itself. Eric
