Jacques,
Well... Actually... I think you're actually offering quite a lot here.
I don't think it's very time/quality
productive for someone who's passed that "aha" moment
to produce this documentation; at least not without
the aid of an "uninitiated".
I'd agree with that all the way. You need a dummy to ask where the keys
are and an expert to show him the way.
That's a good point. I learnt something like that back in school about
man-machine interface (UI). It suggested to always put an
option in UI allowing to hide options not needed for a beginners and the
reverse to show what is needed for an expert (it was about
expert systems, you remember that one ;o). I did not have the luck to work in
AI business but I always tried to persuade my
successive bosses to adopt this idea, I failed. Perhaps one day we will see
that in OFBiz now that I'm my own boss...
Had forgotten about UI and expert systems. But that's exactly what I've
been trying to say.
I'm not an italian but I like "Chi va piano va
sano". In french we say also "Qui veut aller loin, ménage sa monture", in this case we
are our own "monture".
Jacques. I'm a Brit. Don't you know they teach us to shout louder, not
to learn other languages ;)
Shameful certainly, but unfortunately very true. So I had to look it up
in Babel Fish, which tells me:
'Qui veut aller loin, ménage sa monture' means 'Who wants to go far, household
his mounting'
' Chi va piano va sano' means 'Who goes flat goes healthy'
Isn't technology wonderful :-\
I'm guessing it might mean something like the less you do the more you
achieve - which is a kind of Taoist principle, with which I would most
heartily agree http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html
My plan would be to clear the space for it to happen. A blank page with
only one mission. To put absolutely nothing there that isn't necessary,
remove every possible obstacle in the way.
OK, do you want an idea here, a tool ? Please take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map. If you prefer a quick trip :
http://www.thinksmart.com/mission/workout/mindmapping_intro.html
A free tool ? http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Funny you should mention that. In a previous life I was a TV producer
and moved on to making management training films. The company I worked
for in the 80s made a series featuring Tony Buzan - the inventor of Mind
Mapping and author of 'Master Your Memory' - so I worked with him
several times. The joke around the office was that when he phoned home
he had to look up his own number in his Filofax. I never saw him doing
that myself. But one day he did leave without his briefcase :) Which
reminds me of Florin Jurcovici's signature 'Why do psychics have to ask
you for your name?'
Joking aside. I'm not knocking it. It is a very useful tool. I didn't
know about freemind on sourceforge, but I will certainly be checking it
out. That's my weekend taken care of then :) Hope you have a good one too.
Ian
HTH
Jacques
We are in the age of Web 2.0 and user-generated content.
Clearing the brush from the landing strip is not such a huge undertaking.
Letting it be know all visitors are welcome not such an expensive
message to convey.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
They will arrive.
When they do, they'll tell you what they need.
Just try stopping them :)
Ian
--- Ian McNulty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
David,
I don't get the proposition that there are 100
different pilot roles.
There are many 1,000s of different destinations.
Maybe more than a
dozen different pilot roles (commercial, fighter,
bomber, spotter,
etc.). But but there IS a lowest common denominator.
They all fly
planes. They all start off on fixed wing, single
engine props. They all
need to understand basic navigation, aerodynamics,
flight-engineering etc.
But it is very basic. The need to understand lift,
drag, how to
calculate take off velocities etc. But I doubt if
they start of with 3D
vector calculus or need to know what a Reynold's
number is.
So why can't the target be whatever denominators are
common to all pilots?
How to find the door handle and the start button
would be top of my
list. If they can't find those then they ain't never
gonna fly.
Ian
David E. Jones wrote:
On Jan 20, 2007, at 1:25 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:
David,
I can see where you're coming from on this. This
project is better
documented than anything else I've seen in the
field.You yourself
have produced a truly awesome amount of
documentation. I don't know
where you find the time. All are extremely well
written, very clear,
very well laid out. A model of their kind. (No
I'm not sucking up - I
mean it :) So what could possibly be the problem.
I found the Introduction Videos and Diagrams page
you link to here a
couple of days ago myself.
It was whilst working through these videos that
the light bulb went off.
What you're talking us through is a diagram of
the wiring harness of
a jumbo jet.
Essential for the engineers who need to service
it.
Absolutely the last kind of map a pilot wants to
find on his lap.
Know what I mean?
Uh, yeah, that's because it is meant to cover the
framework, not the
applications. The two are very different, change
very differently,
need to be understood by different people in
different ways, etc. My
current estimate is that to produce something
adequate for a "pilot",
given that there are about 100 different "pilot"
roles in OFBiz, would
require many times the effort to produce that the
framework videos
with their diagrams, reference materials,
transcriptions, etc. Right
now I don't have the $500k to get into that... and
the $40k already
spent on the documents which are now PDF-dumped
into the
docs.ofbiz.org site was clearly inadequate,
especially as it is mostly
reference materials (which is why you won't find
how-to stuff in the
reference guides, they are references after all,
just for reference
purposes). The Application Overview for Users is
probably more of what
you're looking for, though that section only
represents maybe 3-5% of
what is in OFBiz right now.
Of course, that's assuming such documents could
even be written in a
way that is close to generally useful. How do I
use it? Well, that
depends on what you want to do... and
unfortunately across a few
different industries that list grows into hundreds
of thousands of
activities...
So, that's the big question with any document: who
is the target
audience? The more specific the answer, the better
the document will
address their needs. But who is the target
audience for OFBiz? ... ?
-David
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