Re: More about Makebook feature in Amaya

Helder Magalhães wrote:

> While as a user I understand you but, maybe not quite as a developer:
> the fact is that approximately 80% [1] of reported bugs are "solved"
> by reading the user manual. Naturally, I guess we all agree that
> applications should be intuitive enough (to dismiss documentation in
> most common use-cases) and that documentation should be as
> clear/simple as possible.  ;-) 
> Some of the steps don't appear to be prone to automation (easily, at
> least, and IMO). I'd defy one to rework this lack of
> documentation/automation into a feature request or a (precise)
> proposal to improve the current behavior! :-)
>
>
> Finally, I'd also invite the Amaya team to comment a bit on this (even
> if no feature request/improvement proposal arises). ;-)
>   

I clearly missed the mark, and it could be argued, the entire boat.

Having now read the documentation my thoughts are (and I offer these 
generously, not as a criticism):

1. There is no entry in the Help outline for Makebook. I had to intuit 
that "Assembling large document collections" was the help for Makebook.
2. Having found it I could not understand it. (Part of that may be 
explained by noting that I never work in the main view that renders the 
page, only in the HTML source. So, with the window split, "Tools" is 
grayed out, thus access to "Makebook" is blocked.)
3. When I switched to main view and clicked on Tools > Makebook, nothing 
happens. I now appreciate that I failed to add the markup required for 
Makebook to work; however, it seems to me that there ought to be at 
least a dialogue box that alerts the user to the failure, and what to do 
about it, or a link to the help file.
4. Some examples in the help documentation would be very helpful. Since 
I never use the tools and features available in the main view, I have no 
idea how to use the Attributes tool. Can Help also include help for 
people who code directly?
5. Language such as "To refer to a document subset, you usually define a 
div element..." is confusing. If there are other ways of doing so, what 
are they?

Regards,

Bill B

Received on Tuesday, 23 February 2010 18:23:40 UTC