On Dec 6, 2009, at 1:40 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Sun, 6 Dec 2009, Frank Barknecht wrote:
I was involved in early PDDP discussions (around 2005) as well, so
PDDP isn't new to me. I dropped out of PDDP for various reasons
after a while. Besides the endless discussion about template layout
etc. another reason for my retreat was, that the help system
started to require certain externals (pddp_link).I was never really involved in PDDP discussions because it is
definitely not right that documentation writers would have to mess
endlessly with [cnv] sizes and pixel-precise positioning all of the
time. Standards that require more work aren't as good as standards
that require less work. Following the PDDP standard requires more
work than the traditional way of making help files. Following the
GFDP requires less work than the PDDP, but that's not all, it also
requires less work than making help patches the traditional way!
Especially for people who aren't quite happy with approximate layouts.
I think we had some useful discussions in PDDP, but not much work came
out of it. It got too bureaucratic. I think the 'official' PDDP
template is a place to start from. I've used a simplified version for
help patches in my 'apple' library, for example.
I think people should learn from PDDP, but not we just need more and
better docs, so people should make them based on the knowledge from
PDDP. Then thru real world use, we can figure out what works best.
.hc
I can accept that, but obviously I had to stop contributing at that
point. Some other early participants also dropped out, some for
similar reasons IIRC.How many of those PDDP contributors would have dropped out at the
point that they would have had to use the template that they
designed? Obviously it's fun getting together on the chatline and
talk about each person's favourite colours and each person's
favourite help-patch width, but living with the consequences of
those decisions is something different. That's why in the end not
much was done after the decisions were made. (If there's any hidden
stash of PDDP docs that *do* follow the PDDP standard, I'd like to
know.)While I'm surely guilty of some anti-Pd-extended puritanism, my
retreat from PDDP didn't have anything to do with it. It has a different story.Regardless of stated theoretical differences, there's not much that
separates anti-extended, pro-portability-across-distribs, and pro- vanilla. Why would the distinction matter?I believe, a general purpose help file template should not require
objects not available in all major Pd distributions.This is a contorted way to say that you only want vanilla.
In any case, GFDP uses a lot of abstractions, which use a lot of
externals, and those externals are required for automatic-layout.
(GFDP doesn't use [pddp-link] or any equivalent of it so far). If
you acknowledged automatic-layout to be an essential feature, then
you'd figure out a way to incorporate it that clashes as little as
possible with your beliefs. Whereas if you start from your existing
beliefs, then you don't even have to ask yourself whether automatic- layout is a good idea.In October, I rewrote the GridFlow manual. That's 165 help files as
of now (actually it should be about 200 help files to be complete).
It was enjoyable. GFDP made it fun to write docs, and that's how I
got myself to do it the best I could. I wouldn't have had the same
level of fun have enjoyed it if I hadn't had the GFDP framework. If
I had had to "use" the PDDP template (that is, reimplement it by
hand in every !@#$ help file) it would have taken forever, and I
wouldn't have gone back nearly as often to add additional notes and
rephrase what I had written, thinking «I will have to readjust the
[cnv]s one more time if I change ANY text in here.»_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone:
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change them, or perish. -William Carlos Williams