Get Real Docs
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The User Guide is an integral part of the product offering. DAZ needs to get their arms around this. Here are a few bullet points.
- Use a single-source editing tool. The advantages are numerous, the disadvantages are non-existant. Get a proper TOC, an index (!), and a keyword search tool, just for starters.
- Start putting dates on your docs. When technical data is not dated, we can't tell if it's current. The internet is filled with worthless docs. Be different.
- YouTube is great for bits and pieces, and it's certainly better than nothing, but it's no substitute for the written word. If you think this is a matter of opinion, think again.
That should get you started.
I can see from the broken pieces that at DAZ, Tech Docs has been in and out of favor over the years. A smorgasboard of approaches can be seen. Cleaning this up won't be easy. But you dearly need to start. Find a professional engineering-oriented (not marketing) technical writer, put him in charge, and give him both authority and budget. Stage 1 would be a Needs Assessment, which I imagine would be sobering indeed.
It is frustrating as hell to learn something after three years that you could have learned in three days, if the information had been made available. Empower your users. Put Reallusion to shame. You could do it if you want to.
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Comments
It would need to be a team approach, since no one person has perfect knowledge of the software.
Of course. Interviewing the knowledgable parties would be key and continuous. And not everyone interviewed would be forthcoming, for a variety of reasons. Some would be "too busy." Others would no longer be with the company. It would in some ways be a thankless job. It would take twice as long as it would have had it been done in a timely way, rather than in arrears. Now there's a mess to clean up too. Just figuring out who the team IS would be a task in itself. You would need to draw on the knowledge of many people, not just the developers.
It wouldn't take forever, but it would seem like it. I wouldn't be surprised if this subject had come up here before.
a user manual?
what a novel idea
No interviewing; the knowledgeable parties would have to BE the team writing the updated documentation. Unfortunately, most of the folks that know this software best ARE NOT technical documentation writers (engineering or otherwise) for a living. Most of them actually develop content for the software and likely do not have time to properly document their own stuff (factual statement, as there have been complaints on this topic at times), never mind help fix the documentation.
One does exist, except that it's for DAZ Studio 4.5 and there have been significant changes in some things since then, hence the OP's suggestion.
I see the thinking, but professionally, it's not done that way.
Yes. I'm familiar with it. It's an excellent beginning.
The only thing I liked about Poser, when I evaluated it about four years ago, was the 830 page manual. The only thing I really disliked about DAZ Studio was the manual which, at the time, was 830 pages shorter.
There is a manual available from DAZ, now, and there are also at least two books on the subject but all three are basic primers which do not go into anything like the detail required to properly expolit the product. One of the books wastes 60 pages on how to use a third party render engine which only a minority of DAZ users are going to be interested in.
We really, really need a proper manual. Ideally, one which is not written in expert speak so the rest of us can understand it. A list of features is no good without some idea of how and when it is approrpriate to use them.
Cheers,
Alex.
I hear that!
Rather than structure the TOC as a tour of bullet points, create a task-oriented chapter sequence. Consider breaking it into two sections - Still Image and Animation.
A proper user manual is a set of instructions, not a feature list. It should be written by someone who knows how to use the tool. Would you buy a cookbook written by someone who didn't know how to cook? I doubt it.
When you see the words "simply" or "easily" in a document, you know it was written by marketing. A keyword search reveals many in the DAZ 4.6 Manual. I'll decide for myself if the task is simple or easy. Stop trying to sell it to me. Marketing people "sell the sizzle, not the steak."
That's how I would get started.
The animation section should build on what was mention in the still image section, as many of the same principles should apply.
I would, because I realize that not every cookbook is going to have totally original recipes in it. ;)
Ah, but marketing can only sell it to those that want it.
My thinking is, most people would want to stop reading after Pt.1. Why clutter their lesson up with stuff they don't want? Pt.1 is the basics, Pt.2 is advanced. Two logical pieces.
Did your nose just grow longer?
Marketing's job is to MAKE you want it, and they're pretty good at it. Let marketing sell their little hearts out. Not in the manual though.
The first time somebody told me they were going to study Communication in college, I didn't know it was the fancy name for marketing. I thought they were going to study linguistics. Today marketing gives you little buttons that say "Learn More." They came to believe their own hype. They think they are teachers now.
A real, honest to goodness, comprehensive and well written manual for Studio will never happen. I've given up asking. I've studied enough marketing to understand why it won't.
I agree. They did ask, though.
Fact is, a surprising amount of information already exists in one form or another. Much of it has been generated by users. What is missing is accessibility. If you're not a master at web search, you'll come up short. I'm often amazed at what I find, then I add it to a thousand other bookmarks. Much information is passed on by word of mouth - like Indian lore. In all fairness, this is not a reflection on DAZ so much as on our overall declining regard for literacy. Shoganai...
I don't just bookmark items of interest, I save them as HTML files in a (hopefully) organized database for my own use. Forums come and go and things disappear. As much as I complain about it, I have to remind myself that the software IS free. If there was a real manual than Daz wouldn't be able to make money by selling horrible, amateur made tutorials.
15 or 20 years ago the NYT wrote that all the senior editors were retiring from the major publishers and were not being replaced. Then the number of publishers began to drop. Around the same time bookstores disappeared from all the malls and were replaced with cell phone stores. You might conclude that a certain demographic finds reading difficult, and that explains why there is no manual.
On the other hand, Blender is a free program that is extensively documented. As is usual, most of these books are written by third parties, not by the Blender group. I don't know what the mechanism is that makes this possible, but DS sould use some of it.
The best example of crowd-sourced documentation that is readable, accessible and dynamic is the Wikipedia, which is hosted by a non-profit charitible foundation. You won't find any broken English there, or blaring YT videos. That's because they use editors who act as moderators.
Solutions to the lack of docs are available that don't require the consent of DAZ marketing. It's not clear to me why they are not used.
While this is true to a degree, with respect to bookstores closing, it in no way is reflective of a lack of appreciation for the written word. Many of the bookstores that closed were in areas where it simply wasn't profitable to maintain a brick and mortar presence when the people there could just as easily buy the books online.
Documented by the user base, no doubt, with guidance (editing) from someone with that sort of experience.
DAZ could open up access to the wiki they host to trusted individuals so the documentation would continue to be available easily from within DAZ Studio.
I've been using Blender forever and have found a billion excellent tutorials...although I DID have to wade through ten billion horrible ones too. Blenders strength is it's massive and enthusiastic userbase. They see a half million downloads a month. I won't comment on why the Daz wiki is unused since I'd like to go at least a full year this time without getting banned.
An open Wiki would indeed seem to be an good intermediate solution that allows experienced users to share their knowledge in an organized fashion. I'm a software engineer and technical writer by trade, 34 years in the business now, and although I am a newcomer to Daz I would be very interested in contributing to such an effort. My initial interest would be improved / updated documentation for the scripting aspects.
Regards,
-Mike
Whoever was updating the product wikis, rehire them. New products haven't had them in months. Or, hold your socks people, put the product readme there.
I've seen very few products that have no entry at all; most have a basic readme. Some do have more extensive documentation you can download, but I suspect that some PAs that make utility acripts build the instructions into the scripts ot save time, if there is any documentation for it at all.
you want readmes http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/start
Documentation, what's that?
My philosophy is open the product and push buttons till you figure it out, LOL
I have to admit I have pristine manuals in my bookshelf dating from Bryce 5 and Poser 6. I would have had earlier manuals as well but gave them away, almost unread. I always learned more from computer magazines, and then forums once they became a common thing towards the end of the last milllennium.