[GRASS-user] [GRASS-dev] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

[Hamish]

Hamish:
> > I know, I was trying to make the instructions generic enough to work
> > with either of the two datasets. I figured those using Spearfish would
> > see the .dem and .10m and figure out that they should pick one, but
> > those running in NC would be hunting around for an exact name which
> > didn't exist.

MarkusM:
> So it is better to use the spearfish location but a raster name from
> the NC dataset and let users hunt around for an exact name that does
> not exist?

Yes! I'd like to encourage a little exploring and making the student
think instead of exactly telling every move to make click by click. But
no so abstract that they get lost. If you are told to pick the "elevation"
map but are only presented with "elevation.dem" and "elevation.10m", both
of which work fine, I'd argue that it's healthy to make them make a
personal choice, they get more personal reward from it that way (sort
of like telling them to select their home-town from a global dataset).
[ok, I'm reaching out on the limb :)]


> Sorry for the provocation, but that is the status quo.

No need to apologize, we get a better end result from frank but courteous
discussion.

I do take your point, and I've now reworded it slightly to give the
exact map names at the start and make it more like "click on your elevation
map" instead of "click on the `elevation` map".


> IMHO, if there are screenshots in the quickstart, the instructions
> should be such that the screenshots can be reproduced, otherwise users
> might be confused that their results do not look like the provided
> screenshots (easy reproducibility of results is not such a bad idea).

it is positive feedback indeed, and that's critical (especially in the
first 5 minutes of the tutorial when they are very unsure of what they're
doing), but again I wouldn't mind a little deviations and choose your
own adventure to it. (both ways visually look fine, and fwiw I'd say the
smaller threshold size has a better looking v.colors result)
Or you can read that as the payoff:effort ratio for me to cut a new
screenshot has not yet exceeded 1.0.

I'm much more concerned about the time they'll spend in the menus and
tabs trying to find first the r.watershed module and then the threshold
option. I know it well and where it is, and still I have to hunt for it.
Lots of screenshots with menu entries circled in red with arrows and things
would be great (Markus N did one like that for the startup screen help
page), but is beyond the scope of this quickstart which is already a bit
on the large side for what it's supposed to be.


> You could add a short half-sentence to the very first
> paragraph, e.g. "... some slight adjustments may be needed for the NC
> dataset, e.g. by using elevation at PERMANENT instead of
> elevation.10m at PERMANENT."

Done, but I left off the @PERMANENT part, those are the only maps to
choose from at that point so you can't go wrong & it just clutters the
text.


cheers,
Hamish