Better make the manual into the #1 resource for any information about Shoes. You could add sidenodes into the manual with answers to common questions that are usually not shown but can be displayed by clicking a link, something like that. The thing with manuals and documentation is that a lot of people don't read them, they are boring and there is just too much too read. And that's also true for electronic manuals. That's why screencasts became so popular I think. If you go and make an electronic version out of a dead paper manual, why not use the possibilities the new medium gives you? The Shoes manual already does this, for example by integrating directly executable code snippets into the manual. This is really, really cool. I don't know if that has been said before, but snippets that run with a click of the button directly from the manual, is beyond great. So, thumbs up. Why not build more upon that idea? Make the whole manual as interactive as possible. It would be really cool if the manual for example would have an interactive tutorial like the Hackety Hack tutorial. Tutorial text at the top and at the bottom you write and test your code. I know HacketyHack was meant for kids, but I loved it and I'm 25. I don't see why just kids should get something like this.
You could also add something like Yahoo Answers. Everyone has a number of starting points, then you can use some of your points to ask a question and other people answer you. By answering they can make points if their answer is choosen as the best solution to the problem. It would be cool to have this in the manual, but it would be okay to put it on the shoes website too. It would have to be on the website anyhow, the Shoes manual would just be a client to use it over a REST API or something. There was something like this for Ruby on Rails and it was really great, I think it was called Rails Weenie. No too stupid questions that you could answer yourself after having looked at the documentation because your points where limited but very helpful answers because people wanted points to ask new questions. Yahoo Answers gives you 100 starting points, way too much. The rails version gave you 5, asking a new question did cost 2 points if I remember correctly, so you spent the points wisely. And if you add that, add the Shoes IRC chatroom to the manual too. A tiny IRC client that connects only to the shoes channel. Much more people would use the channel then I think. Most people just aren't comfortable with using IRC. Who uses IRC anymore today? Linux people, true. But who uses Linux? Well, I do. But I don't count. This is a stupid idea if it isn't implemented right. But if it is done right, this would be awesome. You'd also have two new source code samples for Shoes. How to write a front end client for a webservice and how to make your own IRC client with Shoes ^^ Oh and also, add screencasts right into the manual. I'm sure if you do them _Why, we'd see something like the "Duck and cover" training video in case of a nuclear bomb attack. Something that's so funny that you'd even want to watch it if you weren't interested in the material it covers. No long half hour videos. Just tiny, one to two minute video clips in every section of the manual that provide you with some handy information. They did that in the game "Bioshock". Everywhere in the game are this hilarious 1960's video clips and posters that give you some hints for playing the game, all in the style of this "Duck and cover" video. Shoes already supports playing videos, so you could just add small video clips here and there whenever you have one ready. It's too late to add all this to v1.0 of the manual, but maybe you'll keep this ideas in your head for later. But feel free to just ignore them if you think they are stupid :) Thanks for listening, Chris out. Wait for it... Okay I'm out. 2008/10/2 _why <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Updated the built-in manual and added a table of contents. > > <http://help.shoooes.net/> > > I still need to finish the manual, give it an index, and expand the > tutorial. Do we need a FAQ? Or is that just another link to loose > people on? > > _why >
