Chris, I like your document, even though it is out of date. I think Balazs wants (as would I and others, I suspect) a nearly linear tutorial-like instruction, including: setting up the Git repository; checking out the clean branch; building Factor from that branch; running Factor; setting up your Emacs editor (pick the best editor and use it to show off the color and formatting; Factor looks like hell in black and white); some simple instruction on tweaking font styles and sizes in the Listener, Browser, and your Emacs editor; Slava's palindrome tutorial; his little GUI-with-button-that-beeps tutorial; his TCP time-server tutorial (and more). Describe how to use the most often used features, the ones you must know to be fluent and effective, like hitting F2 in the Listener after saving code in your editor, to pull in and compile all changed source-code files, or using Ctrl-n and Ctrl-p for easily recalling and looping through all of your previously entered expressions, and so on. You, the fluent ones, can add some much more good stuff to this basic path of instruction, which should be a narrow tree with a clear path toward fluency with the environ and minimal competency with the language, with a few branches off to side-topics, with appropriate links into the Browser help system, for deeper, optional study. You don't want to overload the new guy with the massive hypertree of Factor knowledge. It's too much, but will be become very approachable once a practical foundation is laid with a few basic programming exercises and practical advice on how to use the tools (Git, Listener, Browser, Emacs).
Shaping -----Original Message----- From: Chris Double [mailto:chris.dou...@double.co.nz] Sent: 2010-November-11, 05:24 To: factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Factor-talk] Docs and other topics On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 12:09 AM, Balazs Toth <balazs...@gmail.com> wrote: > - is there some accumulated, readable documentation of Factor somewhere? Or at least a cheat sheet about the various features of the language? The help system is really nice and sufficient as it is if someone already knows what he is looking for. The built-in help, http://docs.factorcode.org and various blogs posts are what is available. > - in another thread you are talking about the UI and the adaptation of the system by someones supervisor. I would like to adapt the language as a supervisor, but cannot do that because of its unreal learning curve and lack of a handbook. The learning curve is not really 'unreal'. I learnt it back when it had no documentation at all! That aside a printable readable document would be nice. No one has stepped up to write one yet. There used to be a 'Factor Handbook' PDF and maybe something like that would still be useful. Here's the last version I generated from the latex source: http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/handbook.pdf (Note that it's way out of date. I just present it to show the type of thing that might be useful). > About how reliable are the various features one can read about in the help? I'm not sure what you mean by this. Chris. -- http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Centralized Desktop Delivery: Dell and VMware Reference Architecture Simplifying enterprise desktop deployment and management using Dell EqualLogic storage and VMware View: A highly scalable, end-to-end client virtualization framework. Read more! http://p.sf.net/sfu/dell-eql-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Factor-talk mailing list Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Centralized Desktop Delivery: Dell and VMware Reference Architecture Simplifying enterprise desktop deployment and management using Dell EqualLogic storage and VMware View: A highly scalable, end-to-end client virtualization framework. Read more! http://p.sf.net/sfu/dell-eql-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Factor-talk mailing list Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk
