Dear Keith, On Thursday, January 16, 2003, at 10:49 PM, Keith Rollin wrote:
I'm curious...if you found a part of Poser that wasn't working, why *wouldn't* you read _Bugs.txt?Initially I never even thought that Poser wasn't anything other than just fine, I naturally assumed it was just me being stoopid as happens quite often. 8-)
Never having seen the source code, would it be too much trouble to put in a dialog box that said 'Not Yet Implemented' or even to disable or remove the sound option from the setup. It it hadn't had been there for me to toggle I probably would have 'guessed' that sound 'wasn't an option'.
I guess there's more than enough work to keep everybody busy without catering for me.
I mean, that where bugs are recorded (as you know from reading _ReadMe.txt). A file called ReleaseNotes.txt should really contain development news, which would include bugs that are fixed, not bugs that remain, don't you think?Hmmm. I've had to think about this one. I'm pushing 38, been 'mashing' software for twenty years as a profession (Am I a professional yet Ma?) and I still have an aversion to documentation. I still get a buzz from wading in and getting mucky, I have however learnt that it pays to read the Readme. Perhaps if it was called DontReadme.txt more people would read it.
I'm just asking this because I'm wondering if the documentation needs to be re-arranged.
I am lucky enough to have a G4 powerbook as well as the PC at home, and for contracting away those lonely evenings I wanted to get it 'sorted' for Palm development to while away the hours (DVD comes in handy too!). I guess I still haven't learnt to control my still unbridled enthusiasm for all things hackable. Will I ever learn. I don' t think so.
My only suggestion would be to call _Readme.txt something like...
_ReadMeNoReallyIMeanItOrYoullJustLookDumbLater.txt
...to cover people like me. On the whole it's fine. In fact, it's a *glowing recommendation* that I've hacked all over PalmOS (for a Clie) without spending a penny on a printed book *because* the available docs are *so damn good.* And all the spin-off web sites from other people. I hope soon to post a few things myself, fully documented to the hilt with Doxygen, free of charge.
Commercial vendors should try to compete with the quality of *some* open source projects instead of just dumping any old rubbish on their customers.
Thanks again for bailing one out. I can only finish here with a comment I once read about making things user-proof, it went something like:
"As soon as you make it idiot-proof, along comes a better class of idiot".
Which has kept me in business for a long time, as has,
"A users terminal is their castle."
Which is why I continue to twiddle, twang and generally break things. So, don't re-arrange anything on my account,
(drops to knees in deference)
"I'm not worthy..."
"I'm not worthy..."
"'m not worthy..."
Sean Charles.
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