The below exchange helps me get a bit of perspective. Do read the full gripe for Documentation just some hours ago here <https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&#!msg/tiddlywiki/e6tyJwnzJic/2wLCmip9CQAJ> - caused because the method of creating an external link that changed path for different users wasn't quickly "findable" in the documentation. This is what the complaint ended with:
And I'm not a Luddite. I'm fairly technical, but my expectation is that an > end-user tool should make it obvious and easy to do common things. If I > have to put on my 'programmer hat' to figure out how it works, it probably > is too hard. > Then a little below that, *Mark S.* puts this all into perspective perfectly by saying: If you use it as described, it works out of the box. But if you immediately > start wanting to do something unconventional like inserting a macro into a > link, well, that's what the forum is for. There's lots of documentation. > Way more than many other projects I've seen. The problem is, it's not > possible to foresee how people are going to want to use TW than it is to > foresee how someone is going to want to use a string. One person wants to > do macrame, another wants to make a tin-can phone, and someone else wants > to make a candle-wick. Very hard to document the 1000 different ways people > might go. > > It's much easier to document a single-purpose tool like "gpg" or "notepad" > then a sprawling octopus of a tool like TW. > Once we want something, we assume it is an obviously *common* requirement! That's today's way of thinking in this technologically complex world. We want things to happen *our* way almost effortlessly. When those "oh so obviously important" solutions aren't already ready and waiting for us, and we know we might be capable of doing it ourselves, we want to do it quickly, very quickly, without having to put on our "learning" hat. Remember even just a decade ago, one had to employ a full time programmer and spend quite a lot of time explaining in detail what was wanted, and then the programmer, who had spent years learning the language would take days to make it happen. Now, we expect complex customization to be "out of the box" or "doable easily by myself" - without putting in too much *effort* learning! And we expect the documentation to be laid out perfectly for us to accomplish that learning almost instantly. A Difficult challenge for the documentation creators! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/c2476e8f-4608-4177-aee0-2d3437df5eba%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
