Hi Stuart
Thanks - that offer was a nice surprise
Surely I want to work together with all of you to get the best, "up to
date" Manual/PDF possible. And surely I am highly interested in
integrating what I have into any "company-wide" release system.
"joacher@gm.." now proposed the link to "www.lyx.org" and I had a short
look:
- seems you can even import HTML into that system
- and sftw.-download for UBUNTU is available (ver.2.0.0)
So I will have a closer look next week and try what I can do with it.
In parallel I am still in the final review of my proposal (wording,
spelling, comparing EN/DE, links, etc) - hope to have that done within
the next 2 weeks - and surely you can help "improving" - I will check
how to grant excess (either on my "UBUNTU-cloud" or "homepage").
Pls see my answers to your points inserted in the following.
I am positive we can arrange a common understanding and work-line. I am
looking forward to it!
joe
On Sat, 2011-09-10 at 00:05 +0100, Stuart Buchanan wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 2:45 PM, I wrote:
> > More comments when I get the time once I'm back.
>
> Hi Jomo,
>
> I finally got the time to look at your work in detail. I think there's
> a lot of really good work here, and it obviously represents a lot of
> time and effort. Thanks again.
>
> I _really_ like a number of things you've done with the structure. The
> following comments look at what you've done as a contrast to the
> existing Manual, and with a view to changing The Manual:
>
> 1) The Briefing section (which covers some of the Take-off and
> In-Flight sections of the existing manual) looks like it is designed
> to get the first time FGer up and running quickly. I really like it as
> a concept, and it's something that the existing Manual doesn't
> provide. I think it goes into a bit too much detail (e.g. covering the
> keyboard XML format), and could be cut down still further to provide a
> simple introduction to choosing and aircraft, airport and setting the
> time/weather for a flight, along with an introduction to the controls.
My basic thought was indeed (see "Start" -> "For the most
impatient" (uuups: I just notice: My wording there is not perfect)): If
the new guy has installed FlightGear by whatever means - let him start
exercising it - and have the referencing system explain him any
questions popping up. i.e. start with "SOLO Flight" as a first
introduction. That way I hope to keep his attention - which i am afraid
will not last long when I first try to explain all the "Basics".
I am even thinking about putting the "Installation" + "Briefing" into
the Appendix and just start with "Solo"! That other stuff is boring -
let him start with "using" and then explain him what he then, later may
want to know!" The whole FlightGear principle is like that: Start with
one small area and a few aircraft - he will then develop his appetite
for more some time - for sure! And then he will look for those infos!
I know: That is not how you (should) "study" something - but most of our
"customers" are young and want to "fly" - not "study"! And somehow I
understand those people: I always was more the "trying" then the
"theory" guy!
So I could imagine to structure like:
1) Start as is
2) Flight-Manuals ("Solo" up to "Features"
+ Briefing 1st part "Starting Up" only
3) Technical References (Installation + Briefing-rest)
4) Appendix mostly as is
Did I shock you now ???
> 2) The First Solo complements the existing tutorials well. Nice work!
>
> 3) Moving some of the detailed reference material (e.g. command-line
> options) to an appendix makes a lot of sense.
>
> 4) Your work highlights the importance of providing better navigation
> between sections. We should certainly be looking at how we can improve
> navigation within the HTML version of The Manual. It would be great if
> we could have each chapter in the bar on the top, along with a section
> drop-down to provide straightforward navigation.
>
> Taking a step back, IMO there should be three separate sections to The Manual:
> a) A Getting Started Guide
> b) A Reference Guide
> c) Tutorials
>
> In fact I think that was the plan ages ago, but initially only the
> first was created (hence the filename - getstart.pdf), and over time
> its scope expanded to cover all three.
>
> At present the first two are combined, but your work shows that we
> really should be separating them more, so that the first Getting
> Started section covers the basics, and provides references to the
> detailed documentation in the Reference Guide.
I am not sure what those initially thought areas actually should have
covered, seeing it from today i would suggest 3 FlighTgear-Manuals
1) Flying: We are working on it.
Here I would suggest a Manual!
2) Designing and modeling: I could see it going through some
modeling-examples and by that introducing the existing programs,
procedures, books and wikis. It should cover the whole design aspects
and may even include the Program itself. Not a programming manual - but
something showing the major tools in action - and where to start and how
(if interested)!
Thus I guess could just be a structure in the WIKI!
3) FAA Certification for whatever (Pilot-license, approved
simulator, ..). But I guess that one is such unique, that I would not
put it into a general Handbook!
Would those 3 cover all aspects/needs for FlightGear?
> Martin has always been (rightly) keen to limit the PDF size of The
> Manual to ~ 5MB, on the basis that if it is any larger it becomes
> difficult to download and browse.
I am not a Profi on that: But is that still a problem with todays PC's,
that are running FlightGear? I thought the standard allowable
transmission size today is about 20 MB. (But I am not sure! But I am
sure I will not use my AppleIIplus for FlightGear (=48 KB RAM)).
> It may be the case that we should
> look at splitting the tutorials off from the main manual, either as a
> single PDF containing all the tutorials, or as individual PDFs. This
> would have the advantage of allowing additional graphics withought
> impacting the main manual filesize. Food for thought!
You may have noticed that all my 10 headers are standalone HTMLS, just
connected by the top menu-line! I will especially look in the LYX if
there is the possibility (like in words etc.) to have one Main-doc just
as a framework for multiple docs. But I know there are/were problems
when needing as well PDF as HTML! (That was why I asked if it is good
enough to just convert my 10 parts part by part!). OK -I will try to
find out in the newly downloaded "lyx"!
But (sorry): I personally would set the priority onto HTML! It is a
pity, but it seems there are less and less people reading (even normal)
books on paper! In the near future probably nobody will have shelfs
anymore to place any hard-copies on it - and the soft-copies are
somewhere distributed over the world in some (computer) Clouds!
> In terms of contents, I spotted the following issues on a quick skim through:
> - "The FlightGear-Manual" should be "The FlightGear Manual"
> - In English we don't use the subscript quotation mark .
(Thanks: I just understood why some of my quotations are subscript and
some not: I use two PCs - one with a German and one with an English
OS-version! But same software with same language-groups). But still the
output is different!)
> - The default Windows directory on an Engish system will be under
> "Program Files", rather than "Programm Files"
Ok - will do all above
> - Installation needs to cover the (newish) FG_AIRCRAFT environmental
> variable. (Yes - The Manual doesn't cover that either at present ;) )
Is that already working? I thought there are still discussions on HowTo!
> - VFR X-Country refers to KRHV as the destination airport in "Merge
> into the pattern"
will correct
> - In general there's an assumption that the user is going to use the
> command-line interface. I'm not sure that is valid - we should be
> trying to describe how to perform an action using either the
> command-line or GUI if possible.
No - Yes, definitely. I (hope) there is only one chapter where I did not
mention the FGrun-Option: At the IFR-X-Country setup! Because there I
ran into problems with the drastically changing weather design: I could
not find settings that produce a similar weather + 3D-Clouds combination
when setting it with FGrun, settings in the menus, and without FGrun! We
always need the option "without FGrun" for Linux, where not everybody
has FGrun available! If somebody knowns one setting for options AND for
FGFS 1.9 as well as 2.4 - and still gets nice clouds as on my picture:
Please tell me.
But I favor the "as few as absolutely needed" commands option w/o FGrun,
because then I know what the student sees when in the cockpit! With
FGrun you might get surprised by prior settings - and that means you
have a unpredictable status!
Thus I try to use the menus from inside the cockpit. That even has the
advantage of a direct feedback to his doings!
> I also spotted a bunch of minor typos and places where the the English
> phraseology would be slightly different from the translation from
> German. To be honest, it's more hassle than it is worth typing them
> out here for you to transcribe them again into your HTML - they aren't
> major issues but small readability improvements. With access to the
> source code I could spend a good couple of hours going through and
> making minor corrections.
> I hope this helps.
I will be most happily pointing towards you in future, if someone does
not like "MY English"! Thus I certainly will look to make it accessible
for you - I just never yet did that on my private stuff - so let me
evaluate.
> Finally, I think there are two related issues we need to address
> before we go any further:
> 1) You have a concern about copyright and presumably licensing, and
> from your previous email don't seem very keen to have your work
> released under the GPL. Can you explain in a bit more detail what your
> concerns are please? The Manual, like the rest of the FG base package,
> is released under the GPL, so this may stop any integration work in
> its tracks.
My concerns result out of the many discussions in the forums about our
competitors that earn money with what we are doing. It is absolutely
easy in todays browsers to
- download the whole HTML
- just Find/Replace "FlightGear" with "Flight-XYZ"
and have not only a masterpiece in engineering but also in marketing
support! I am full heartedly OS and GPL - but I would try to separate
between
- "Product design" (with all the "design-data" and their descriptions in
the FG_ROOT/Doc/*.xml" etc. -
- and marketing aspects an/or education! Why should we help others with
those!
I belief we have an interest in marketing our own GPL design. But I am
no lawyer, and do not know if that is possible! e.g.: Is FlightGear a
company with a marketing interest? I am just trying to make it more
difficult for certain people - it is not a go/nogo!
> 2) You've obviously put a lot of work into this. Martin and I have
> presented our view of why integrating this into the latex source of
> The Manual is the best way forward, but that is going to involve
> further work and will inevitably mean re-doing some of the work you've
> already done. What is your view - do you have any appetite for
> integrating this, or do you think there is a better way forward?
See my opening above! Yes I am very hungry (and am a retiree with some
more time than others -- except for my fully underpaid job as
FlightGear-ATC!)
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