Curvemeister Forum

Curvemeister ships with a 200 page manual documenting features, concepts, and tutorials.  We're considering making a printed manual available.

Click on your choice in the above list to help us make that decision.

Thanks, and Happy Curving

Mike Russell

Curvemeister ships with a 200 page manual documenting features, concepts, and tutorials.  We're considering making a printed manual available.

Do you mean the Help pages, accessed by hitting F1? Or is there something else described as a manual that I've not found?

Windows Help pages are a crap way to learn about a product. Hard to use, search and browse. The worst of all worlds in many respects!

I don't see the point of a printed manual, but having a nicely structured PDF file as part of the package that I could print myself would certainly be useful.

So ditch the MS help manual in favor of a PDF?

So ditch the MS help manual in favor of a PDF?

No!
but also a pdf file!

Frits

So ditch the MS help manual in favor of a PDF?

Hmmm. MS Help is OK as a reference guide since it's easy to search and read a few paragraphs from. But it's lousy for learning from - dozens of small, interwoven pages is not a nice thing to sit down and try to read and absorb, and looking at small, low res, on screen images as is necessary for CM tutorial content is just plain hard on the viewer.

A PDF is nicer. It has a top to bottom, linear structure like a book, but also has "hot spots" which allow you to jump to another part of the document, so references and index entries link to other places as you'd expect. I currently have the MySQL manual open as a PDF on my desktop - 1,500 pages, and it's really easy to read and use. Adobe got it right with this one.

That's not to say MS Help doesn't have it's place. Hitting F1 and looking for, for example, the keyboard shortcuts page, is much easier from MS Help than starting up a PDF reader to do the same. So I would suggest pulling all the tutorial and worked example stuff from the current MS Help pages where they don't really work and where people might not find them and putting them in a PDF. Leave the dry, reference bits in the MS Help where it's quickly accessible.

All, I stress, IMHO. :)

Hmmm. MS Help is OK as a reference guide since it's easy to search and read a few paragraphs from. But it's lousy for learning from - dozens of small, interwoven pages is not a nice thing to sit down and try to read and absorb, and looking at small, low res, on screen images as is necessary for CM tutorial content is just plain hard on the viewer.

Indeed, but I use a second computer and to read the manual. But a pdf file is nicer.

A PDF is nicer. It has a top to bottom, linear structure like a book, but also has "hot spots" which allow you to jump to another part of the document, so references and index entries link to other places as you'd expect.

Yeah.... I know, I have lots of .pdf files and use a easy reader ( not the big Acrobat-reader).

for example, the keyboard shortcuts page,

I have plasticized  the shortcuts pages. that is easy.
I do that with dozens of important things witch I often use.

Frits