Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> Yes, but WHAT DOES IT DO??!? >_<
>
> Sometimes people are just too close to a project to remember that
> somebody else might not know this crucial information. Without that
> context, the rest often makes little or no sense.
>

Not restricted to software, either. How about microwave ovens?  Or the DVD
player I have? Manuals thick as a magazine, full of tech-speak. Far too often,
it seems that the engineers who create these gadgets are the same ones who
write the manuals.  Great engineers, terrible writers. Especially if the
instructions are originally written in a foreign language, then translated.
OMG!

Ken W.

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>> Yes, but WHAT DOES IT DO??!? >_<
>>
>> Sometimes people are just too close to a project to remember that
>> somebody else might not know this crucial information. Without that
>> context, the rest often makes little or no sense.
> 
> Not restricted to software, either. How about microwave ovens?  Or the DVD
> player I have? Manuals thick as a magazine, full of tech-speak. Far too often,
> it seems that the engineers who create these gadgets are the same ones who
> write the manuals.  Great engineers, terrible writers. Especially if the
> instructions are originally written in a foreign language, then translated.
> OMG!

Actually... most such items I've seen have quite good manuals. E.g., my 
dad's CD player has an extensive manual that explains more or less 
everything you could possibly want to know - given that we're talking 
about a device where you put a CD in, press the big green button, and it 
plays music.

The fun ones are motherboard manuals. These are always auto-translated 
from Korean, and you often get the impression that the person writing 
the documentation isn't completely sure what option X actually does! o_O

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Darren New wrote:
> You gotta love some of the open source documentation out there.

More silliness.

They show a picture of a bunch of spheres with the Lambert shader.

Then they give a description of the Minnaert shader:

"""
Minnaert works by darkening parts of the standard Lambertian shader, so if 
Dark is 1 you get exactly the Lambertian result. Higher darkness values will 
darken the center of an object (where it points towards the viewer). Lower 
darkness values will lighten the edges of the object, making it look 
somewhat velvet.
"""

I spend a couple minutes trying to figure out where the difference is, 
before I look in the corner and realize they set it up with "Dark:1" in the 
options. Very helpful!


(So far, I like POV much better for everything but the modeling itself. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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On 2/9/2009 1:18 AM, Invisible wrote:
> The fun ones are motherboard manuals. These are always auto-translated
> from Korean, and you often get the impression that the person writing
> the documentation isn't completely sure what option X actually does! o_O

I love the fact that the BIOS has descriptions of the options you can use.

For instance, if there's an option FOO, with possible settings of B, A 
or R, then the help section will read:
B: Select option B.
A: Select option A.
R: Select option R.

Thanks for the tip, guys!

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> I love the fact that the BIOS has descriptions of the options you can use.
> 
> For instance, if there's an option FOO, with possible settings of B, A 
> or R, then the help section will read:
> B: Select option B.
> A: Select option A.
> R: Select option R.
> 
> Thanks for the tip, guys!

EXACTLY!

Or something like

   "Shadow video RAM:
      Enable - This will enable shadowing the video RAM.
      Disable - This disables shadowing the video RAM, preventing it 
from being shadowed."

Uh, yeah, but... WTF DOES THAT MEAN?! >_<

Hence my comment about "the person writing it doesn't know what it 
does". ;-)

[Actually, on reflection, the grammar is too good for a motherboard 
manual...]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Uh, yeah, but... WTF DOES THAT MEAN?! >_<

To be fair, for something like a BIOS, it probably means "if you don't 
understand what this means, you shouldn't be f'ing with the settings."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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Darren New wrote:
> Makes you appreciate POV-Ray docs.

Well, POV-Ray docs are impressively good, even before comparing them to
other open source software.

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nemesis wrote:
> Exactly.  Blender feels to me closer to vi than anything else.  You just
> press regular keys and contextual commands are issued. 

Many KDE apps are like that. I just pressed R (not Ctrl-R) to reply to your
post in KNode. U marks unread, D marks read. Left and right change the
currently selected message, which is strange, since in any other list you'd
expect up and down to do that.

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> > Exactly.  Blender feels to me closer to vi than anything else.  You just
> > press regular keys and contextual commands are issued.
>
> Many KDE apps are like that. I just pressed R (not Ctrl-R) to reply to your
> post in KNode. U marks unread, D marks read. Left and right change the
> currently selected message, which is strange, since in any other list you'd
> expect up and down to do that.

Face it:  newsreaders too are very unusual pieces of software.  And usenet is
about as old as vi anyway. ;)

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nemesis wrote:
> Face it:  newsreaders too are very unusual pieces of software.  And usenet
> is about as old as vi anyway. ;)

KMail has about the same key bindings.

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