[chuck-users] FLOSS (user editable) manual for ChucK

[Scott Hewitt]

Hi,

Also happy to help with any documentation sprint

Scott

mike clemow <gelfmuse at gmail.com> wrote:

>+1 for community manual.
>
>I would love to help.  Also, I'd be glad to rally any and all
>Chuckists I know to book-sprint on it if need be.  Whatever the
>documentation solution is, please let us know how to help.
>
>Mike
>
>2009/11/27 Kassen <signal.automatique at gmail.com>:
>> Adam;
>>
>>> Great to see you here.
>>
>> Yes, isn't it? I was enjoying Tomasz's posts elsewhere for a few years now
>> before running into him at Steim. It's a small world.
>>
>>>
>>> Firstly, I would like to announce to you all that I successfully
>>> defended my PhD this week and now that is done I will be spending more
>>> time here collecting the great ideas that come through this list.
>>>
>>
>> Both are great news! congratulations! What is your PhD on?
>>
>>>
>>> Presently I am working on converting the manual to asciidoc, which is
>>> a simple formatting language that produces both html and pdf copies.
>>> This will allow us to keep the manual and the website in sync. This
>>> has been a sore point for a long time now.
>>>
>>
>> Right, this is a good point. The threshold of entry should be lower there so
>> everyone who would like to help can. I think most of the more senior users
>> have their own field of expertise that many others will know less about and
>> of course new users will see issues that the rest overlooks. To me the
>> manual is a important thing as it will be the first port of call for many
>> people who are considering ChucK; that's also why I felt the recent
>> compilation issues needed a quick fix. If we don't make a good first
>> impression we'll never reach world-domination.
>>
>>>
>>> I have signed up for a github account and I would be happy to put the
>>> chuck manual there. This will allow everyone to grab from my branch
>>> and then I can pull changes from everyone and then commit them back to
>>> the project. How does that sound?
>>
>> Good. But then we need a intro to this. A intro to using this system aimed
>> at people who are not routinely using version management. Like me :-).
>>
>>>
>>> Future. I want to have a documentation sprint. How does December 19th
>>> look? Anyone else interested? I would be online all day giving out
>>> tasks and helping people get into the technical parts of adding to our
>>> document and also looking for snippets of wisdom or errata to improve
>>> the minutia.
>>
>> This sounds like a good idea, and very fitting with the inspiration Tomasz
>> here took from the recent Ardour sprint in Rotterdam and online.
>>
>> Let me commit to covering the interaction between DSP in code and in UGens;
>> that's a interesting topic that I feel has so far been under-appreciated
>> even though it's one of the things where ChucK can really shine as compared
>> to other systems.
>>
>>> I think that too much fragmentation of the project is not good. Ge has
>>> done a great job and keeping everything together and I think that is
>>> one of the reasons we have so many people here. It is easy to find
>>> information (or to find out that the information doesn't exist) and it
>>> is easy to ask questions to a list that actually responds. Having a
>>> dev or working version of the docs is good but having it all in one
>>> place for newbies definitely eases the transition, so I don't want to
>>> break that "feature."
>>>
>>
>> I respectfully disagree there. I do agree that Ge is doing a amazing job
>> that can't be praised highly enough but the information is not all in one
>> place. Most is in the manual but then some things are only in the examples
>> or even just mentioned in Ge's thesis (whole chunks of that should likely be
>> pasted straight into the manual). Then there are things that are only
>> mentioned in the list archives or on the forum or WiKi, hinted at in the old
>> docs on the site or even just in the VERSIONS file. I think there are also
>> bits that aren't documented at all; there must be as every once in a while
>> something pops up that has been implemented but never documented.
>>
>> Of course this has so far not been a great issue as the scene is still small
>> enough for the people who know how to find it all to answer all questions
>> and this can certainly be attributed to Ge who set the tone of friendly help
>> to all comers (quite unlike some lists I hear about).
>>
>> To pick just one thing; just the other day I was talking about the "repeat"
>> structure in ChucK on the Toplap list when debating the influence of syntax
>> on musical movements (as well as kissing as a quantitative measurement of
>> musical quality; it's a wonderful list). Even I myself can't remember where
>> I found that one (might be Ge's thesis?). The manual mentions it's
>> existence, but not how it works;
>>
>> repeat(3)
>>   {
>>   <<<"this will be printed three times">>>;
>>   }
>>
>> ...a wonderful device, it can be used immediately even if you have just seen
>> it once so it's a great introduction to loops, it's simplicity makes it
>> great for casual impulsive livecoding with a drink at hand, but don't ask me
>> where it's documented.
>>
>>> These are my current thoughts. What do you think?
>>>
>>
>> Yes, yes, yes &yes. Great ideas, it's good to see you back on the case and
>> we'll do this. I'm in and I hope we'll see a strong turnout of people
>> writing, suggesting and proof-reading.
>>
>> After this I'd like a sprint on the /examples/ dir. There are some bits in
>> there that I find questionable. We can debate style (some structures have
>> become out-dated) but I feel they should all run without errors or warnings
>> (this is not currently the case) and there are some otherwise dubious bits
>> here and there. I think I kept some notes on those somewhere but might have
>> misplaced them.
>>
>> Great initiative!
>> Kas.
>>
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>
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>
>-- 
>http://michaelclemow.com
>http://semiotech.org
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