Help Questions

Just a little blurb with my opinion... Again.

Codegear has numerous goals, with a couple of them being to maintain their
existing customer base and also to *expand* their customer base.

Some great ideas have been put into place to generate new customers/users
such as the Turbo free downloads, some of the incentives and marketing. I
can see how new programmers coming to Delphi can get a bit annoyed trying to
learn the language or the how to use the built in routines.

In the old days, you did not have to buy a book from a 3rd party because
most of it was in the old Turbo books which would get you going right away.
After the books went away, the help system could be used to locate a list of
routines with a description of what they did. If you clicked on the
routine, a detailed explanation existed as well as an example.

One of the things I see that really hurts is the current help situation.
Since the compilers do not ship with books anymore it's even more critical
to have the help system packed with keywords and examples of using functions
and procedures.

Help should be available from the online site and should be a living
document that could be constantly added to or modified to meet the needs of
the users. Users should always be able to download the most current help
files for offline viewing. I know recently some of this has been worked on.

There should be a section for the RTL that list EVERY procedure and function
and shows how to use it.

I will show the following example again. Many use it to show Codegear how
easy this should be.
Example: http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=For

My Questions for Codegear:
1) Why does help always seem to be such a challenge? It's not like the
language itself has changed drastically over the years. You guys come up
with good, detailed help then poof, it's gone and you start from scratch.
Why?

2) Why can't your help be maintained in a universal document that you can
export to the most current help system that Windows uses, or HTML or PDF.
Why start over each time instead of simply adding to it?

3) It has to be expensive to have people constantly redesigning the help
sections. Would it not be quicker for new routines to have their help
*added* to an existing help document?

I can see it's being worked on, I just do not understand why it's the
challenge it seems to be. Others software vendors don't seem to follow this
path.

Richard






.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Help system still broken - reports Alice
    ... I'd also really like to HAVE a set of manuals and books. ... I see no reason to upgrade past Version 7, the last reasonably stable and working release. ... Having said all that, I have great hopes for CodeGear, but it's an uphill climb, and indications are that some of the slopes are too steep for the resources available. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Targetting VB developers
    ... I understand, but there's an investment in getting the ISBN number - before you get one), plus in order to then sell the books in stores like amazon.com and physical stores, the royalties would drop to a fraction of what it is right now. ... I don't expect to be able to "live" from the royalties of my books on Lulu.com, as my main income is generated by training, consultancy and development work, plus a few bits of webmastering, advertising banners on my sites, some conferences/events, and magazine articles in the few paper magazines that are left. ... Bob Swart Training & Consultancy Forever Loyal to Delphi ... CodeGear Technology Partner -- CodeGear RAD Studio Reseller ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi and the .Net platform
    ... CodeGear competitive. ... New young developers are not going to be that attacted to native Delphi. ... This is probably the major customer base of Delphi, ... It's too late for CodeGear to radically change their .NET ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: What next ... ?
    ... >Having said that you can't really compare practices, Kim sells mostly books ... >where not a lot can go wrong and the customer base is generally more well ... If I was selling books or something like that I doubt I ...
    (uk.people.consumers.ebay)
  • Re: Failure to manage
    ... Corporate image is important. ... Not sure why we shouldn't be "working on the customer base". ... Delphi Product Manager - CodeGear ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)