On 09/11/2011 06:11 PM, Chris Morley wrote: > > > >> Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:51:33 -0400 >> From: [email protected] >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [Emc-developers] State of documentation ?? >> >> Jon, et al. >> >> I think of this migration of emc2 documentation in terms of three >> different activities. >> >> 1) transforming the sources of the existing emc2.4 documentation from >> lyx to asciidoc form. >> 2) reorganizing the documentation. >> > > I think the reorganizing of the docs is due and needs discussion. > But i think we need to poll users more the developers on how the docs > would be more helpful, ultimately it saves us from answering questions > that are in the manual but are hard to find. > > from 2.5 HTML > > One thing I have noticed is drivers and parallel port are separate and maybe > better if they were all under a heading such as I/O drivers > > 'Realtime components' I'm not sure why these particular components are listed > on their own. > > And really I think the HAL file should be made smaller and be about basic use > of > HAL and a few of it's tricks for diagnosing problems. > > Chris M > The rest of HAL belongs in the integrators manual as HAL is mostly what an > integrator has to deal with. > Chris,
One thing I found, and find frustrating, as a relative noob when it comes to things CNC in general and EMC2 in particular, when I was trying to get my machine set up and running, was the documentation does a good job of listing variables, but it doesn't do a very good job of explaining what the variable does, what changing it does, what other variables it influences, and how it should be changed when tweaking the settings. I'm talking primarily about the variables found in the .ini file, but that also seems to cover the stuff the goes into HAL and the hal files also. It seems that all the stuff is there, but it doesn't really describe how each thing works very well. It would be nice to see more examples of how hal file stuff is implemented too. I'm a computer system and network admin in my day job, and I'm fairly computer savvy (I manage Unix and Linux systems as desktops, servers and firewalls). I've done a fair amount of programming over the years so it doesn't scare me to go under the hood, but I got stymied in a lot of places because there just wasn't enough talk in the docs about how the variables interact with the system, what changing it to a bigger or smaller number does (or making it a negative number does), and how changing a certain variable may have an effect on how another variable does it's job (think acceleration and velocity). I think that's the biggest problems noobs like I had, and what generates a lot of the questions. Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Doing More with Less: The Next Generation Virtual Desktop What are the key obstacles that have prevented many mid-market businesses from deploying virtual desktops? How do next-generation virtual desktops provide companies an easier-to-deploy, easier-to-manage and more affordable virtual desktop model.http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51426474/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
