07-17-2024, 05:01 AM
There's the hardware and software, both huge endeavors,
Then there's the manual. It's a bottleneck, but it's also your gem in the rough.
I know you often say you don't have the time and money to put into it,
but this documentation is your most significant product.
With a device this complex and interwoven, it's everything.
To make it a less weighty document, maybe approach it as 5 or 6 discrete volumes, and don't worry about cross-indexing.
- Introduction and Overview (what's here, power and possibilities)
- Hardware Reference (Just the boards, wires and voltages and cables, nothing referring to a software release),
- Navigation Basics (getting around, the menu tree, a map, a few simple examples to try, providing positive first success)
- Menus In Depth (vols. 3a and 3b i.e. the hard stuff, but spread out, new features go here in vols. 3c, 3d...),
- Cookbook (Examples, FAQ, cheat sheets, (and please) Light Internals Overview and History of NerdSeq)
Rough copy paste sections from the current manual into separate draft volumes and see how it feels.
Condensing down the paragraphs into dense information nuggets makes the information less potent, not more.
Whitespace is free and you don't even need to make ton of tedious tables if things are just spaced out with good headings.
It's a pdf. Don't treat it like you're saving paper.
Those ADHD adjacent issues mentioned above with the documentation are there for lots of us.
I suspect it's worse that you believe it is.
The hardware is rock solid, the software teases at great functionality, but getting stuck in the mnemonic menu system,
without easy reference at hand, always frustrates me at some point, losing the ideas flow, and I have to move on.
I've got a NerdSeq, Slim Midi, video i/o, and cv board and I so, so, want to use them more,
but it always drags me in the weeds, jumping from page to page, digging for words in paragraphs.
Please fix the docs. Stop adding features, it's enough. That's done. It's great.
All of those jacks on NerdSeq hook up to other things, and I can't dedicate 80% of my focus just on NerdSeq.
You've got to make it easier so people won't be discouraged by all of the wonders you have created here.
--
Then there's the manual. It's a bottleneck, but it's also your gem in the rough.
I know you often say you don't have the time and money to put into it,
but this documentation is your most significant product.
With a device this complex and interwoven, it's everything.
To make it a less weighty document, maybe approach it as 5 or 6 discrete volumes, and don't worry about cross-indexing.
- Introduction and Overview (what's here, power and possibilities)
- Hardware Reference (Just the boards, wires and voltages and cables, nothing referring to a software release),
- Navigation Basics (getting around, the menu tree, a map, a few simple examples to try, providing positive first success)
- Menus In Depth (vols. 3a and 3b i.e. the hard stuff, but spread out, new features go here in vols. 3c, 3d...),
- Cookbook (Examples, FAQ, cheat sheets, (and please) Light Internals Overview and History of NerdSeq)
Rough copy paste sections from the current manual into separate draft volumes and see how it feels.
Condensing down the paragraphs into dense information nuggets makes the information less potent, not more.
Whitespace is free and you don't even need to make ton of tedious tables if things are just spaced out with good headings.
It's a pdf. Don't treat it like you're saving paper.
Those ADHD adjacent issues mentioned above with the documentation are there for lots of us.
I suspect it's worse that you believe it is.
The hardware is rock solid, the software teases at great functionality, but getting stuck in the mnemonic menu system,
without easy reference at hand, always frustrates me at some point, losing the ideas flow, and I have to move on.
I've got a NerdSeq, Slim Midi, video i/o, and cv board and I so, so, want to use them more,
but it always drags me in the weeds, jumping from page to page, digging for words in paragraphs.
Please fix the docs. Stop adding features, it's enough. That's done. It's great.
All of those jacks on NerdSeq hook up to other things, and I can't dedicate 80% of my focus just on NerdSeq.
You've got to make it easier so people won't be discouraged by all of the wonders you have created here.
--