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[StrongED] Re: S & R query



In article <ab3d5fba56.harriet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
   Harriet Bazley <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks for the opinions. 

The page concerned is
http://stronged.torrens.org/man/search/advanced.html

> > Hopefully that introduces it in a readable way. Without queries about
> > how well/badly I have worded and ordered things I will never know!

> My immediate reaction - it's not a good idea to start off with a highly
> technical definition of memory pointers and bytes being inspected.  
> You'll lose/scare off the vast majority of your audience almost at once.

This is a section on *Advanced* search. It is not finished yet and it's
still not to my satisfaction!

It is getting longer than anticipated so may need dividing into two parts.
Simple and complicated! If I can decide what is simple and what is
complicated!

Certainly that explanation is not useful for many of the elements. 
But has it put anyone off? Opinions welcome!

> You probably want to start off with concepts like "in order to search
> for a given piece of text it needs to be inside double quotes, as
> everything else gets interpreted as an advanced search command" - this
> being the most immediately obvious difference between the standard and
> advanced search syntax.  If you just type in the word you want to search
> for you get an error, which is frankly less than obvious to the beginner
> who is used to 'normal' searching.

Will bear in mind.

> All the image links appear to be broken currently, as are the links to
> other pages that I checked, presumably because this is a work in
> progress?

Hopefully now fixed. I had moved the work to a separate sub-domain and
reorganised. Yes, I had forgotten the images.

> I don't understand the 'bracketed blocks of text' section - how is this
> distinguished from the previously described uses of braces and round
> brackets for a very different purpose?

Work-in-progress! Will consider!

Much of what I am doing consists of understanding Fred's necessarily brief
StrongHelp - which is amazingly comprehensive! But as Fred has pointed out
- writing clear instructions is not easy - especially when it is not your
native language. He may have a point - but I have seen far worse
instructions from some who have no such excuse.

The main problem with the StrongHelp is that you have to know a feature
exists to look it up. Even then, finding it is often not easy!
 
One trade-off is: how much effort to I put into Advanced Search at the
expense of other items?

A lot depends on knowing what people want to learn!

-- 
Richard Torrens.
http://www.Torrens.org for genealogy, natural history, wild food, walks, cats
and more!

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