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<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">Mick (and all):</p>
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<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">That certainly makes sense. One thing that strikes me when I consider the concrete examples offered so far is that so many of them are centered on/driven by the needs of the FM contributors themselves (like you guys,
but also going back to the founding), rather than hypothetical end-users outside of a specific context like the contributors' own teaching/workshops or other needs. Which is completely fine AFAIAK, since my own interest would be largely selfish -- I want
manual-writing practice and portfolio samples <span>😊; and if anyone else can get some use out of my contribution, that's great too. It does appear that the situation is a bit different for software like Inkscape (vs Audacity or Blender, or Unity, or Firefox)
because Inkscape's own site appears to endorse the Floss manual as semi-official. So Inkscape might be the perfect example of a Floss manual where end-user utility is maximized.</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span>At the same time, it's also interesting that Inkscape's own site, in their 'Learning' tab, leans heavily as well on tutorials contributed by individuals in the user community, many of which are in video format.
Actually, I'm not aware of any software site (certainly in the graphics world), whether open-source or proprietary, that doesn't make heavy use of video tutorials, however rich the text documentation is. I think this just speaks to a current diversity (maybe
a transition -- we'll see) in end-user preferred learning modes. Now, for an open-source, collaborative framework like Floss, I would say your other point (Mick) is probably decisive: the text-and-screenshot</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> type of manual
is easily remixed/edited/updated, which is essentially impossible in video tutorials (except for wholesale replacement/update by the original maker, which is what ends up happening in practice</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">). This isn't just about
a difference in presentation technology, but about a fundamental difference in genre: traditional manuals, like all traditional tech writing, are intended to be anonymous, or neutrally voiced, such that any individual's contribution (given reasonable quality
standards) should be transparent and interchangeable. Whereas the (literal) narrative 'voice' of a video tutorial is not only irreducibly singular, personal, non-anonymous; that's also precisely what makes them *engaging* for people who prefer to learn that
way. </span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I do wonder about a future (or on-going) convergence of the two modes: for instance many video tutorials are quite short now, focusing on very specific operations in a tool (even if they're
then linked into longer series), which makes them more useful to a broader user base. I think if I were designing a text-based static manual from scratch, now--at least for software that featured complex GUI operations---I'd probably want every section to
at least include curated links to such short vid tutorials or demonstrations (even if I had to generate some of these myself). But this already violates the anonymity principle...and at the same time it doesn't, IMO, go nearly far enough for some of the software
uses I imagine documenting. Blender, for instance, is a 3D modeling tool that relies on such complex and finicky GUI operations that a series of text instructions and screenshots would, I think, be hopelessly inadequate to convey how to actually use it.
There's still absolutely a place for textual Blender documentation, but I think it's more in the way of a reference dictionary than a manual as such. I even feel this way about Audacity. It's orders of magnitude less complex-finicky in its GUI than Blender,
but if I wanted to convey how to do any kind of multi-track sound mixing and editing in order to build up an interesting sound-scape (and this is another document example I'm actively considering), I can't imagine doing this in any way but video. Again, though,
this may simply speak to the way I personally have been learning software (and on a largely hobbyist basis, at that) for the past decade. </span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I would be very interested, anyway, to see if anyone had come up with a framework for anonymized, open-source video tech documentation. Actually you could sort of do it with a tool like
Adobe Captivate, using their 'software demonstration' mode and maybe a text-to-voice feature. Ok, nevermind...</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">Matt</p>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Discuss <discuss-bounces@lists.flossmanuals.net> on behalf of Mick Chesterman <M.Chesterman@mmu.ac.uk><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, January 4, 2018 2:04 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> discuss@lists.flossmanuals.net<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FM Discuss] Hi folks</font>
<div> </div>
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<div class="BodyFragment"><font size="2"><span style="font-size:11pt">
<div class="PlainText">Hi there,<br>
<br>
I've got different hats on here.<br>
But one of my aims is to involve some of my University students in making manuals as a really productive learning activity.<br>
<br>
So that's another reason to lower the barriers to contributions via text and screenshot being the basis rather than video. And the ease of remixing / updating.<br>
<br>
Thanks<br>
Mick<br>
<br>
> -----Original Message-----<br>
> From: Discuss [<a href="mailto:discuss-bounces@lists.flossmanuals.net">mailto:discuss-bounces@lists.flossmanuals.net</a>] On Behalf Of<br>
> Maren Hachmann<br>
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<br>
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