CompuServe Messages

Okay, let me rephrase it. The Impulse manual is not written for the reader. It's written from the perspective of the developer: here's what we want you to know. Is that kinder and gentler enough for you? What I find really annoying is the manual's harping: if only you fools would understand you have to experiment …. Yeah, no argument. And I'll bet if you're sitting there with the source code and an intimate knowledge of how the program works, you still have to experiment a lot to get the results you want. But I don't have the source code, and this isn't a box of crayons. It's a complex machine in a closed room where you can't see it. I'm perfectly happy designing my own Chippendale table and building it by instructing a hidden machine to "draw cutting tool X across wood block A at location B," and taking responsibility for the result, without any help from a manual about how to build a table. But it becomes a ridiculous exercise if I don't know whether "cutting tool X" is a chisel, plane, chain saw, knife or sissors — and if it's a saw, I'd like to know what its teeth are like: size, shape, orientation, number, etc. This is the kind of information that should be clearly and concisely laid out in a well-indexed reference manual. Then, if they want to lecture me about experimenting, no problem. And if they want to sell an optional tutorial, or add $100 to the price to cover the cost of the reference manual, you'll hear no complaint from me.