[Ardour-Users] Hm...

[David Kastrup]

Paul Winkler <slinkp at gmail.com> writes:

> You do have some good points.

I definitely also have some bad points.

> I agree that a manual that doesn't require online access would be
> preferable. I'm not sure it should be built in though.  Maybe a good
> compromise would be bundling the FLOSS manual with the download and
> just linking to the local file. And maybe a button to check for /
> download manual updates.

That depends on how much catching up to the version released at the same
time the manual has to do.  For major Emacs releases, the goal is to
have the manual up to date by having every part proofread by two
different persons.  That's the main thing holding up major Emacs
releases; it is rather unpopular work.

One has to admit that the quality of the manual ends up being a major
selling point over its major competitor XEmacs.

> As long as it's online though, I also wish the manual was searchable;
> google can fill in the gap,
> eg. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fen.flossmanuals.net%2Fardour
> but that's a minor inconvenience.

Texinfo is searchable, and good Texinfo manuals are indexed and
crossreferenced extensively.  Emacs is a fantastic and convenient Info
file reader.  Unfortunately, the standalone info reader is several
notches inferior (not being able to display images, for example), so the
Texinfo system (used for pretty much all of the GNU project) is not
overly popular among non-users of Emacs.  Navigation and rendering speed
in either case is much superior to HTML browsers.

So while Emacs has a really nice solution for its well-integrated online
manuals, I don't see a similarly compelling solution for Ardour in it.

-- 
David Kastrup