Brad,

	yes, it can also be put like that. and Derek has experience on
documentation and he already saw that is not enough, and, because of the
described gap, I had to agree with him. To illustrate: even for the
hypothesis of having today a Squeak with perfect documentation, little
simple and friendly articles will be worth because they work in another
information access level. So, an initiative like this has not any conflic
nor excludence for Squeak documentation. This is to fulfill another gap. A
gap that several here has already surpassed having "payed the toll" (in at
least the self-education's operative costs in $ and patience) but others are
nessesarily going to pay or desist from entering to the Smalltalk market. 

	So maybe, with a sum of modest distributed and heterogenic efforts
from veterans and experienced ones giving the example (as a secondary but
good intention), we can create a culture to find 'discounts' for their
'toll' making our part in the community grow index's health and showing that
the community is prepared to (safely) receive more people.

	This could be specially interesting now that there is a trend of a
grow in dynamic 'languages' interest and so Smalltalk may attract people.
The nonSmalltalker market are sowly (more slow that we like or want)
starting to be aware of smalltalk like feature's value (see that Rails conf
for instance).

	And for motivated authors, also the articles can be preludes of
papers (formalizations) or just the exploration through the discussion and
extrapolations of ideas. So more space for useful criticism (so interesting
conclusions) may appear for sure because the Smalltalk is the technology
that promotes intelect in a very straight way, this is, more informatics and
less computer than other technologies.

	As in any software project, there are other things to do than
writing software and they haven't necessarily to be expensive nor
extravagant.

	cheers,

Sebastian Sastre


> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] En 
> nombre de Brad Fuller
> Enviado el: Martes, 15 de Mayo de 2007 19:03
> Para: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Asunto: Re: Smoothing Squeak's usability barriers
> 
> I understood what you were saying, Sebastian. Basically, you 
> are suggesting that since documentation is hard to come by 
> (especially in the Squeak world) a good alternative, and 
> all-around compromise, is to have experienced users take up 
> blogging/podcasting and record golden nuggets for others to 
> learn from. While this can not substitute for clear tutorials 
> and good documentation, it's a good compromise considering 
> the amount of work necessary to pen a short blog or record a 
> short podcast.
> 
> --
> brad fuller
>  website:  www.bradfuller.com
>  linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bradfuller
>  +1 (408) 799-6124
> 
>