[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
<[email protected]>], who wrote in article
<[email protected]>:
> In the mean-time we improve the documentation as time permits. We will
> try to incorporate your suggestions into the docs sometime this week.
Any luck with this?
Thanks,
Ilya
P.S. I see that one of my messages was lost (at least not visible on
gmane). I put a (slightly edited) copy here:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Many many thanks. Having a "correct" and understandable
categorization of commands should be very useful.
Thinking about it more, it would be nice to start the "Processing"
page with something like this (if this description is correct!):
The *state* of an ImageMagick program consists of 3 parts:
*) The workset: a collection of images currently loaded;
*) Image sequences: the workset is broken into several segments; the
last of the segments is called "the current image sequence";
*) ImageMagick settings: input/output settings, and operation settings.
Arguments to an ImageMagick program are processed left-to-right.
Each argument may have one of the following effects:
*) input directive: add image(s) to the end of the current image
sequence; details of an operation may depend on input settings;
(may they have side effects on settings???)
*) output directive: outputs the images from the current image
sequence, and empties the current image sequence; details of an
operation may depend on output settings; (sideeffects???)
*) ImageMagick setting directive: changes a setting; this may
affect future image operators and input/output;
*) Image operator: affects all the images in the current image
sequence equally; details may depend on operation settings;
*) Combining operator: replaces all the images in the current
image sequence by one compound image; details may depend on
operation settings;
*) Image sequence operator: manipulate image sequences (as a side
effect, may duplicate or remove images in workset); (is it
affected by settings???)
*) Operators with "bizzare" semantic (preserved for backward
compatibility only).
(Of course, each of these should be a link to the curresponding
subsection.) And, in the section on "setting directives", they should
better be broken into 3 parts: input/output/operation.
> We always have hope someone will volunteer to improve the documentation.
> If you are interested we can give you access to the documentation files.
This would be useful *after* the "processing" page takes shape (since
some edits I would like to do must rely on the structure of this
page, and my understanding of processing may be quite misled by
defects in current documentation).
In particular, when the "processing" page has "a correct" set of
categories, I think each of the options in "Command-line Options" page
should have a tiny icon with a link to the corresponding category. In
a draft above, there are 9 categories: 3 types of setting directives,
and 6 types of the rest.
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