Bit of a rant....
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Your rant is entirely justified - the poor quality of documentation and tutorials is one of my biggest beefs with software developers in general; I can't even think of a "best practice" example from any of the major applications that I regularly use.
It seems it is the norm these days to leave such things to the tireless unpaid volunteers on forums such as this one. If the likes of Fredo, TIG, ThomThom etc. can do such a good job of explaining their tools, I really don't see what excuse Google/Trimble have for doing such a shoddy job.The classic example of course, is coming across an item in a menu with a name you've never seen before. "Oooh, it's in the same menu as the tools I use loads, could be a useful time-saver." - clicks help file...
"Discombobulationator - use this tool for discombobulationating."
Thanks a bunch! (Corel in particular seem good at this trick).My favourite Sketchup example is the downloadable .pdf manual. "Great" thinks me, I can still get help when I'm away from the internet working on a laptop. For sure, lots of great info there - but what the hell happened to the hyperlinking? There's not so much as a single bookmark in the entire document, not even for chapter headings! Pretty much all the software I use that can create .pdf's make it almost impossible NOT to include bookmarked chapters - if the document is structured with headings etc. so is the .pdf export by default. Did they turn off that feature on purpose just to get a bit of extra web traffic!?
Still, suppose we should think ourselves lucky that SU wasn't made by Microsoft! I often wonder if anyone EVER had an OS problem solved by clicking on the little Windows Help Centre balloon - it may as well just print up a generic "Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?" message!
...aaah, that's better. A good rant is so invigorating at the start of the day!
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Reading all this has put me in the ranting mood, so here goes --- I burned my toast this morning!!!! I hate when that happens!
Seriously though, I know what you guys are talking about and I agree with you. I've pretty much quit turning to Google for help. These forums are pretty much my only source for information when I have a question or a problem. Keeps my blood pressure within reason.
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Don't get me started on printing in SU!
I know that my rant angers "some people" but come on adjusting the size of your view???
I started on Autocad Dos and printed easier.
You need layout to print?
I know all the work arounds they suck.
Love SU but printing sucks!
So there.
I feel bettewr now! -
The link you posted refers to Layout, not SU. When I clicked on Help Center under the Help menu in SU, it took me to the top level SU Help page. From there, you can search for "text" or "text tool". Those will bring up a list links (at the top of the list ) to text tool help pages under Help Home->Construction tools->Text Tool. If you read through those, you will find how to configure text settings globally (Model Info) and for individual text entities (Entity Info).
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David beat me to it but I also noticed you've linked to a help file page for LayOut not SketchUp.
I do agree that help files for software can be a challenge to deal with but having been on the other side, I know they are difficult to write, too.
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That are issues of which we experience a lot in the SketchUp Support Forum...
It is simply: There a lot more people reading every little word in the docs than people who are working on writing/improving the documentation. There is a huge amount of documentation (and all in more languages than SU supports!) that misses hyperlinks, references to menues or is not up-to-date, +Layout/SketchUp confusion, but not enough ideas that the readers have get through to those who have access to edit it.
We can hope that Trimble hires and strengthens the support team and makes it easier to users to contribute improvements for other users.
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The writing of "help files, user guides, instruction manuals etc" is the very root of the issue. Unfortunately they are written by people that know how to use the product, this means they often can't see all the issues involved.
A good example is cook books. Recipes need to be tested by normal home cooks before they can be used. They find the faults and the recipes are edited to suit. The results are still not fool proof.
The same goes for user guides etc, but the larger the amount of info the more that can be wrong. And often it is printed without customer testing.
Then you start looking at the effects of translating into another language.
My wife translates help files from German into English, often she has no knowledge of the subject so the technical words and phrases can end up as simply her best guess, usually we try to look at the whole document to get a better understanding but a lot slips through the cracks. -
Wow, thanks very much for not just sitting back and sniping at me. Relieved to hear that others sympathize. But the comments kind of progressed into a general critique/rant/support of or toward the help files available. That's actually not where i wanted to go and I apologize if that wasn't made clearer.
I was specifically angered about the oversight committed, and it's a very common one in the Sketchup help files (not even withstanding that I linked the wrong one for my purpose) that neglects to simply tell you where to find the item/function you are inquiring about. Sorry I don't have more examples at hand. But it's happened to me often enough in previous searched for info that this last on just had me saying "ok enough... it's time to let off steam".
@unknownuser said:
What kills me is that time after time the help files just leave you in the dark on how to navigate to the tool that you ask about. It's as if they just assume that you've found it on your own already and happen to have a question about it.
The instructions that follow may be, and usually are, quite thorough and navigable. But the nitpic that induced the rant is confined to that quote above.
Thanks for the comments.
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Ok, here you go.
Just randomly went for one.
I went into the 'model info' under 'window' and looked about.
I noticed "dimensions" --> "dimension settings".
Let's give this a try.
Go to Google and look for "sketchup dimension settings".
I get this...
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94986Same story as before. And this is the norm for these help files. If I'd gone to this page to see where this tool ACTUALLY IS I'd still be in the dark. It should be the very first bullet point in EVERY help file. Navigating backwards through the hyperlink tabs offers "construction tools" which is no more helpful.
Unless the tool/option you are inquiring about is actually visible to the naked eye with an icon in the tool set, the instructions, every time, just leave it up to you to go fishing for it on your own.
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@unknownuser said:
It is simply: There a lot more people reading every little word in the docs than people who are working on writing/improving the documentation.
That's why Wiki's are made. This forum (and other SU sites) are like a wiki guide but not so categorized or organized. I doubt there'd be interest in doing a full wiki guide, or would there?
On the Mac at least, under help you can type a word and it shows you menu item locations. Of course the word has to be in the menu--and if you don't know it...
I find the SU help items are often too short or narrowly focused so you keep having to go looking for more subjects to get the details for a tool. At least they are well linked to the application and always working, unlike some. They also have a folder hierarchy that might help if you look at it. What is the future of the online help, which seems to be run by Google still?
I like Apple documentation. It's written as if NOTHING will ever go wrong or be unclear.
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@trogluddite said:
The classic example of course, is coming across an item in a menu with a name you've never seen before. "Oooh, it's in the same menu as the tools I use loads, could be a useful time-saver." - clicks help file...
"Discombobulationator - use this tool for discombobulationating."
Thanks a bunch! (Corel in particular seem good at this trick).
Years ago, before I discovered SU, I picked up a little freebee drafting app from TUCOWS.
It seemed simple enough and was aimed at drawing flow charts, which I needed at the time.One of the first things I did was click on HELP, then "Documentation".
Here is a short extract as I remember it........
Drawing Tools.
LINE Use this tool to draw lines
CIRCLE Use this tool to draw circles
BOX Use this tool to draw boxesYou get the gist....
Then at the bottom of HELP was the "On-line website Help file"
So I clicked on it.........It opened a page that was IDENTICAL to the Help documentation.
I guess my first clue should have been the web address..... ending in .RU
It was pretty good at drawing flow charts, but a bitch to edit anything, especially text.
Scrappo after 3 hours of frustration.
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