[Pdweb] Proposal wrt. guide new users with silk gloves

Steffen stffn at dibidut.dk
Fri Feb 2 14:15:18 CET 2007


On 02/02/2007, at 2.48, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

>
> On Jan 28, 2007, at 5:40 PM, Steffen wrote:
>
>> I've been thinking about how to best and with less changes to the  
>> current website make the into-tour to Pd land feel more like trip  
>> to Bhutan; or Nangijala if you prefer.
>>
>> My focus was fist to give a more detailed explanation of what  
>> opportunities there are with respect to getting Pd. The fist easy  
>> step was to add extra information to the downloads section (and  
>> maybe rename it to "getting Pd"), but i've fund that it might be  
>> better to do some more through out chances to the site, which i  
>> think will be a good solution in the long run.
>
> I think "downloads" is appropriate since most software pages use  
> that term for the page where you get the software, from my experience.

Ok. Gentoo, fx, uses 'get gentoo'. But the reason for changing it  
wasn't that, as mush as it was to hint more insight. It can be  
"downloads" for me, it not the end of the world.


>> 2) some explicit examples that can be downloaded, much like the  
>> examples on the processing site. This have been discussed before,  
>> where the conclusion more or less were, that having both a curated  
>> showroom regularly updated and a more alive share-your-work- 
>> section on the website would be more desirable then a static  
>> example section just. I still agree. But i'd rather have a static  
>> example section then nothing. And it seam more likely that such  
>> think cold happen then the other. And then it will be more in line  
>> with this About section, it could use more digestible examples,  
>> which would let fx a showroom use it's potential to have a more  
>> advanced and arty focus.
>
> I think this should be the showroom.  We should strongly encourage  
> people to include the sources.  It could also be a question for the  
> curator at the time.  If I was curating, I think I would only  
> include works that release at least some of the sources.

I'd like such showroom too. But a section with easy examples related  
to the About page i think would be a good start. It could be seen as  
redundant given the material in the help browser, but displaying a  
few easy things in a webpage i think will fertilizes downloading Pd  
in the fist place. Again, it's not the end of the world, and if there  
at some point will be a showroom, the examples section could just end  
with a pointer to that showroom for more material.

>>  3) a page describing the goods in the Pd shop (vanilla, pd- 
>> extended, devel, externals, abstractions, pddp, etc). This section  
>> in particular i think new users would benefit from knowing from  
>> the start. i wish i did.
>
> I don't think newbies need to know about the subsections  
> "externals", "abstractions", "pddp", etc.  But yes to the vanilla/ 
> pd-extended/devel discussion.  I tried to explain on the downloads  
> page, but I suppose it could be made clearer.

My newbie experience is that i wanted to know about these thinks  
before i started patching. I don't think it should be the fist thing  
displayed, but there are users to whom it matters how things could  
put together - or how things are organized. As for abstractions, i  
think even more new'ish users like to know about it.


>> The documentation section. There will be pointers from that about  
>> section 3) to appropriate pages or parts of the documentation  
>> section. Fx. about how to build Pd or externals one self. I think  
>> it would be nice to have a sub-section of the documentation  
>> dedicated to building. That is move the general building stuff out  
>> of the dev section and into the user docs.
>
> "user docs" should be newbie focused, but build stuff could go in  
> an "advanced" section I suppose.  But generally, building software  
> is categorized as "developer" stuff, from my experience.  To me, it  
> is very important that we do not needlessly create our own  
> categories for these things.  There is a pretty broad consensus for  
> how to label and categorize these things on websites which I think  
> we should follow.

Ok. I don't want to create new categories. It's not that. It's just   
that in this particular situation the line between building as a user  
and building as a developer is thin. It does makes sense to build  
stuff as a user, as it does makes sense to bug report as a user. I  
might be off the bat.  Anyways, it's not the end of the world to me  
where the info is placed.





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