It suddenly occurs to me that the docWiki issue goes far beyond
Revolution, though it's possible that Rev could be the first software
company to take full advantage of the opportunity. As others have
mentioned, Rev is a great platform for a comprehensive and
frequently-upgradeable help system.
For instance...
The help files on my OS 10.3.9 Macintosh are okay, compared to
previous incarnations of the Macintosh, and compared to the help
files on Windows XP, frinstance. Compared to what the Macintosh
onboard docs *could* be, given lots of generous, loyal, knowledgeable
users, a very small team of editors, a wiki, and a few tech tricks,
they are a disgraceful disgrace!
Why should I have to spend precious minutes--or hours--hunting on the
Apple support site for a technical bulletin that I hope will explain
why my modem won't send faxes, and how to make it work? If other
users have had the same problem, and solved it, one of them would
donate the needed information to the Macintosh docWiki, in clear
English, plus maybe a link to the technical bulletin.
The editors could check it for accuracy, add some "related links"
index it and cross-reference it, release it to their public docWiki,
and at the same time, release it to the next generation of indexed,
cross-referenced help docs, ready for download, or update, or
whatever. The topics could -- and maybe should -- be searchable in
several different ways -- filter, search-for, logic-tree, FAQs by
topic and subtopic, etc. Maybe boolean, too.
Such docs could -- and maybe should -- be updated frequently, maybe
every day, and eligible for automatic updating, should the user
desire it.
In the same way, docWiki users could suggest clearer wording on
topics already in use, novice, intermediate, and expert versions of
the same topic, terse or verbose versions, and so on. Some topics
would be specific to one machine model, OS version, or software
version. Users of one machine, or one software version, ideally,
could download only the information necessary for the software, the
machine and the OS they actually use, though public docWikis would
remain available for other versions, other machines, and so on.
The examples go on forever. Why should the same weary volunteer
experts -- on newsgroups and help boards -- answer the same 200 or
300 questions over and over and over again? For such questions, all
that is needed would be a link to the right page on the wiki or the
right page in the onboard help documentation. That would leave the
volunteer gurus free to field the relatively few new, significant
questions. Once solved, those issues would also go to the docWiki.
And so on.
Onboard help files could and should be integrated in such a way that
help documentation from various sources could be merged for indexing
and retrieval-- yet tracked separately, so they could be deleted or
updated separately, if needed. Like if I upgrade to a newer version
of PageSpinner, for instance, the onboard docs for PageSpinner would
be refreshed at the same time, without disrupting anything else.
Macintosh already does something along these lines. But the
documentation is so thin... Any time I have a slightly unusual or
complex issue, I can be pretty certain the answer I need will *not*
be in the onboard help docs.
I'm not talking about just Apple or Windows. Every application,
programming language, specific machine, etc., would all benefit from
this approach. The thing that makes me crazy about this, when I think
about it, is that it just wouldn't be very difficult, or expensive,
for any manufacturer or developer to participate.
Some kind of open standard for onboard and/or online help would be
very helpful, of course. God knows we don't want Bill Gates to choose
the standard!
When I think about it this way, Rev is already doing a very good job
of indexing its onboard documentation, with plenty of hyperlinks,
"see also" links, scripting examples, and so on. Better than any
other application I use. (I don't know about other development
environments. Rev is the only one I use.)
All that's missing -- for Rev -- is more of same, plus a wiki, for
continuous improvement and expansion, plus an editorial team, plus
frequent downloadable updates.
Just a thought. A minor inspiration. I dunno -- maybe stupid -- maybe
already thought of, or on the way. I'm not a computer professional.
Cheers,
Tim
On 17 Oct 2005, at 12:45, Marielle Lange wrote:
Anybody to keep an eye on my wiki during that time
Sure I know TikiWiki pretty well by now - can you give me admin
access so i can turn off those smileys :)
I did find this
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=SoftwareRevolution,
but felt that it wasn't quite what I was looking for.
In what sense?
These page are meant to serve exactly the same purpose you propose.
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=RevolutionSnippetTips
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=ProgrammingXtalk
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=TutorialsTeachers
I agree, this is a bit burried down, there is too much content on
this wiki...
So, I've set up a wiki at http://revdocwiki.wikispaces.org/ .
Hmmm... three TikiWiki sites out there, and another wiki. Is it
really necessary to set up another site - setting up is easy
-maintenance another thing. Another example of the "revolutionary
approach" to collaboration perhaps :) Could we not all work on the
same wiki - said hopefully :)
NB - having some regular crashes with XML parsing in 2.6.1. For
instance I can parse TikiWiki pages from www.openpartnership.net,
but testing on
http://revolution.lexicall.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=RevolutionSnippetTips
appears to crash Rev.
Has anything changed?
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