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Topic: Users Guide Online (Read 5721 times) previous topic - next topic

Users Guide Online

Since many of us have outdated User's Guides (snail mailed with original order), how about putting a continually updated, comprehensive guide online? Including the info on the CD now being mailed to new NWCers.

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #1 –
Absolutely! Put yourself in the place of someone who has downloaded on a trial basis and is deciding whether NoteWorthy will meet his/her needs. The Help files, frankly, suck. It does no good to be told constantly that the word you have typed in doesn't exist in the files, especially if you have already tried five or six ways of stating what you are after. And when you do guess right about how to ask for it, it does no good to get a summary of what a given command will do but no clue about how to issue that command, which you are not likely to find in any menu you can access from the menu bar--odds are it's in a dialog box, but what keystroke will get you that box? The 'Help' files refuse to tell! And then you get the answer: Look in the User's Guide--which you don't have yet! Just try to find 'user's guide' in Search on the web site! During the past few days I have several time spent hours trying to find out how to do something that took seconds once I finally found out. Please either upgrade the help files so that they help, or put the User's Guide online, or both! I really like your system, when I can find out how to use it!

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #2 –
I second the motion to have the user guide available online, preferably as a pdf or gzipped postscript file. Though I have both copies of the guide, I've developed an aversion to hard-copy... if it's on my computer I'm less likely to "misplace" it, and I can easily refer to it and keep it in the background where a quick Alt-Tab brings it to the focus.

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #3 –
Yes. Productive thoughts. Well done guys.

I maintain the help file for the software at work and its a big job. It's easy to patch users who upgrade their software but the help is always much harder to update and distribute that the software. I'm thinking that the best thing to do is just have it on the web site.
The upside of all of this is that I've never had
to use the online help in Noteworthy, it's too easy. :-)

[All's I want is the Page Setup window fixed (so I don't have to click the tiny arrow after using Preview), and have a drum track and Noteworthy will be perfect.]

happy noteworthying.
ah choo

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #4 –
ah choo is surely right about the difficulty of keeping help files up to date. But they should be helpful, but something as elementary as including in the description of a command the keystrokes needed to get the dialog box containing the command--isn't that obvious? If you want to dig a hole, it's good to know what a shovel does, but it's a good deal better if you also have a shovel.

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #5 –
New user's guide please - in PDF - mine is now several versions out of date!

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #6 –
I'd like to see the current User's Guide in .PDF format continuously available to registered users in the "Download" section.
Thanks!

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #7 –
Please, not PDF.

PDF is fine if you want something to print, but it's horrible for reference on-line - you can't get a full page on-screen with a font that is big enough to read, so yo look at part of a page at a time.  Then as you scroll down to the bottom of a page, you're as likely as not to have the screen jump to the next page.

Having said that, it shouldn't be that difficult to have the user guide posted in two formats, HTML and PDF formats.  That's what we do with our newsletters at work, so I know it can be done, without a great deal of effort.

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #9 –
pdf can stand for "pretty darned finicky".

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #10 –
I do not know who was responsible for the very comprehensive "Command Reference for Version 1.70 with Service Pack 1, 2 & 3" but an update of this would be marvellous.

Tony

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #11 –
Yes. The Command Reference by Barry Graham, Richard Woodroffe et al is quite old now.
I guess as soon as someone volunteers to update it, it will get done.

I'm not sure what Noteworthy Software release with their CDs now.

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #12 –
As a matter of fact, having (for once) Publisher on my office's PC, I've started to export the CR in HTML format (my own goal being to deliver a french translation of it, or a bilingual version). This takes time because as soon as an image and a text are "layered" (which happens very often), the exported result includes big GIFs instead of HTML text, so I have to modify the .Pub sourcefile to obtain a satisfactorily HTML set of files.
If some people are interested in the .pub files I've done (and am currenttly doing, but at a slow pace) in the process, or in the HTML result, just ask me.
Nevertheless, the Command Reference is still useful for many people (including me); but it's true also that it needs to be updated :)

NWCly yours,
__Marsu
 

Re: Users Guide Online

Reply #13 –
Oh, I forgot: did you have a look at the current online manual of version 2?
It's => there <=!