[REQUEST] updated documentation

Tim Cuthbertson timcuth at bellsouth.net
Sun Nov 21 03:07:56 UTC 1999


Thanks, Stefan. I love Smalltalk and Squeak, but for some reason I 
learn better with thorough documentation than by "tinkering under the 
hood". I am very happy for so many of those who can learn everything by 
poking around inside Squeak, but I have just never made that leap, 
myself.

I don't think I'm a dummy. I am the lead Oracle DBA on a major high-
performance reporting project at a major corporation. I just need some 
documentation to tell me how I am supposed to do things. After I have 
done them a few times, I learn pretty well how they work and then I can 
accomplish a lot. So, better documentation for Squeak would be a great 
plus for someone like me.

Tim

>Hi,
>
>I just answered a question on comp.lang.smalltalk about some Squeak
>specific documentation. I found that I could only give him a few old
>links.
>
>Although old links don't need to be obsolete, AND although Squeak is
>experimental, this made me realise that the current documentation is 
not
>really representing the current system. A few examples:
>
>- This "Scripting" thing. Never got quite used to it. I recently came
>upon something called a "Scripting Area" and I had no idea how to use
>it. I found one document on minnow's SqueakDoc, a quick introduction
>that belonged to version 2.2. The tutorial on Morphic has only got a
>part one, while the other parts ("PicoPaint") never seem to have
>arrived.
>
>- Let's say I want to do Flash. VRML. Import a truetype font. It is 
all
>possible, the only thing I miss is the knowledge, or a nice example.
>
>- Minnow's SqueakDoc documentation still announces 2.4. Although our
>versioning goes fast, this looks a little outdated to the user.
>
>An average human is a hard learning machine and needs thourough
>documentation in order to get to understand things. (The "RTFM" 
effect.)
>I think that the current Squeak documentation reveals only the tip of
>the iceberg to the user, and therefore doesn't do the current Squeak
>really justice. Only the code wizards can now play with the full 
system;
>the "end users" need to dig too much information in order to get a
>simple beginning with some (if not all) of the Squeak subsystems.
>
>(more or less) Thouroughly documenting the options that make Squeak
>powerful and different form other smalltalks would really help. I also
>think that it is possible when I see the average development rate of
>Squeak.
>
>Greets,
>
>Stefan
>
>(Our "Do It Yourself" community tells us to try and make it yourself
>before asking for something. I do however not have the write access to
>SqueakDoc, and, more important, I would still be on the "client" side 
of
>this documentation - I am not a code wizard myself.)
>
>





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