[ardour-users] Re: Book

[Jan Depner]

On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 15:40, D. R. Evans wrote:
> The reason that I couldn't get this far before was twofold:
> 
> 1. This is utterly unintuitive, so all my attempts prior to reading the 
> documentation were doomed to failure. That's fair enough, I guess. 
> Serves me right for not reading the documentation first. Sort of. Mind 
> you, people accustomed to Windows programs won't be happy that they 
> can't even do the first thing they're likely to want to do unless they 
> resort to the documentation first. (And this is something that's almost 
> at the end of the current documentation, rather than being close at the 
> beginning.)
> 
	Actually, other than having to rec enable a specific track, this is
exactly the way you record with any VCR, DVR, and most tape recorders. 
You have to select a specific track because you may have 30 or 40 of
them.  This is also how Pro-Tools, Cubase, and others work.

> 2. Once I did read the documentation, I never got very far in the 
> sequence of steps in "Basic Recording". The steps you mention are 
> documented toward the bottom of page 45. But several steps earlier the 
> documentation becomes incomprehensible.
> 
> Step 2 says:
> 
> Check the input configuration for the new track. Click on its editor 
> corntol area. A mixer strip appears in the editor for this track. Click 
> on the Input button near the top of the strip, and select Edit from the 
> menu. The srtdanad I/O dialog pops up to let you connect the track to 
> whichever JACK port you want to record from.
> 
	You did realize that some of the manual is obfuscated so that when Paul
wants to sell the manual there'll be a market, didn't you?


> I do want to make it clear, as I hope I did in my prior post, that I'm 
> not complaining. But when the documentation for Ardour is eventually 
> done, I do hope that it will be written at the right level so that the 
> software becomes useful to general musicians.
> 
	Ardour is actually designed for serious, professional recording.  I
think that the manual will probably be fairly easy to follow.  For a
comparison you can download the Pro-Tools manual - it's not really
designed for general musicians either.  On the bright side, you can
always ask questions here.  Someone will be glad to help you out :)  I
actually started writing some docs for Ardour but Paul asked those of us
who were doing it to stop.  Since he's the man, we did ;-)


Jan