- Tutorial or Documentation?

From: Douglas G. Danforth <"Douglas>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:56:40 -0500

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H. v. L. wrote:
>
>> A good tutorial will help, so let's try to put one together.

>
>
>> I have spent some time today looking around for the documentation ...
>
>
> So, what is wanted, a Documentation or a Tutorial? And then, at what level?
>
> To me the Documentation of the BB Library seems fairly good (anything
> might of course be improved).
>
> As for a Tutorial or similar stuff there are the books by Stan Warford
> and Karlheinz Hug and there is a Tutorial (in german) I wrote (and
> still am writing). But I suppose all this is too basic as it more or
> less aims at beginners. Therefore I should like to know some details of
> what you have in mind.

>
> Harro

The question that must be asked is "Who is the audience?". For whom are
you writing?

I believe Oberon Microsystems Inc assumed the reader was (is) a
sophisticated computer programmer interested in component programming
with an emphasis on computer science.

It seems to me that quite a few of the BB users are actually engineers
and physicists who need to get a specific job accomplished.

I also get a sense that long pages of tutorial documentation would not
be greatly beneficial to most of us (to some, yes).

Proposal:
   Write short topics composed of "why", "what", and "how" with a table
of contents listing the topics.

Nobody seems to include the "why" in their documentation. By this I
mean the *motivation* for including a function or module. What is the
problem the item is trying to solve?

The "what" simply states where the thing is, its name, and its parts.

The "how" gives a brief example of the calling sequence and the
preconditions that must be satisfied.

The "why", "what", and "how" should be kept together as a unit.

Any other thoughts on this?

-Doug

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Received on Tue Feb 22 2005 - 20:56:40 UTC

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