I wanted to share my thoughts and concerns regarding the readability of the Nerdseq Manual, particularly from the perspective of someone diagnosed with ADHD. Please understand that this feedback is personal and may not be applicable to everyone, but I believe it's worth discussing for potential improvements.
Firstly, I'd like to express that I've found the Nerdseq Manual to be more challenging to read compared to some other manuals I've encountered. My intention is not to criticize for the sake of it but to provide constructive feedback that could potentially enhance the overall user experience.
One significant issue I've noticed is the absence of clear paragraphs throughout the manual. This lack of structure makes it difficult for me to focus on the information presented within a given sentence. As someone with ADHD, maintaining focus can be a challenge, and the absence of distinct paragraphs exacerbates this difficulty.
I've observed a notable number of RTFM responses within the forum, and it has raised the question of whether others in the community share similar concerns about the manual's readability. It's important to note that RTFM responses can be discouraging, especially if users genuinely find it challenging to navigate the manual effectively.
In my case, I've resorted to copying and pasting the necessary chapters into a word processor to manually add spaces and paragraphs. While this workaround helps, I believe a revision of the manual to improve readability could be a worthwhile investment of time. It may not only assist individuals with ADHD but also contribute to reducing the frequency of RTFM questions.
I understand that this feedback is subjective and may not apply to everyone. If my experience is an isolated case, I apologize for any inconvenience. However, if others in the community share similar sentiments, I believe addressing these concerns could lead to a more accessible and user-friendly manual.
Thank you for considering my feedback. I appreciate the effort that goes into creating and maintaining the Nerdseq Manual, and I believe that small adjustments could make a significant difference for users like myself.
I see your point and I do agree that the manual can be better. And with every new revision I do improve it.
On the other hand you are not talking with a big team of media designers, industrial designers, graphic designers, a big development team, a support team etc like most of the other companies are. I don't invest time for a fancy manual, influencer style videos etc for an average product.
This is a 1 man company and there I got to do everything. And the most important time I spend is to make a top product. The manual is surely not my strongest point and as you surely already found out, English is not my native language and even worse my English at school was very basic. And before you give the advice that I should find someone to do it... I did multiple times and it always failed big time with much time and money/hardware lost! And there is no budget to hire someone for this. Believe me, there is a reason that Eurorack/Music companies dying these days...
And you are not talking about a manual like every other you probably compare with where everything is said within 20 pages. This is much more complex.
I do not agree and it is definitely not correct that they are RTFM responses. The opposite actually, I always try to help people with a solution and often point additionally to the part of the manual (which I simply very often use the search function to get to the part where things are described) so people can gather more information about it. I can't always explain every functionality again and again since many questions do repeat or are at least similar to others. Doesn't matter I always try to help... So the fact about RTFM responses is definitely wrong. I don't see myself with that. Not to mention all the support contacts I get outside of this forum from every social and external sources which I also always try to satisfy 24/7 (well sometimes I do sleep in between ).
Another thing, people are overwhelmed about (currently 188 pages) of the manual already (and the current preliminary version is not even formatted well yet...didn't find time yet to finish that including many small corrections and some more pictures). Adding loads of paragraphs would let the whole manual size increase to surely 250 pages. I don't think that this would make people more happy. I am not happy either about the current amount already, but there is just so much information and complexity.
A fact I can point you to is that the manual is always available as a document on github.. https://github.com/XORElectronics
Feel free to download it and edit it in your favorite word processor. That would make your current workflow easier. Maybe they are even functions where you can mark everything and just let the processor do its thing. Maybe you can share this then on the forum or so and maybe I can take over some improvements. (Not that I want to move any work to you! In the end it is of course my job to maintain the manual).
That said...I do agree that it can be better, I think adding many paragraphs is going to scare more people about the size of the manual, I do not agree about your 'RTFM' conclusion...support is given at any times even though this is a forum where people should help each other normally..but I often don't want to wait for someone to answer so I do that.
But, don't feel discouraged to suggest any improvements. If you follow it well then you can see that many many suggestions ended up in both the manual and the firmware and I tend to keep on doing this.
Cheers!
PLEASE use the search function if something have been asked or discussed before. Every (unnessesary) forum support means less time to develop! But of course, i am here to help!
(02-06-2024, 10:31 AM)XORadmin Wrote: I see your point and I do agree that the manual can be better. And with every new revision I do improve it.
On the other hand you are not talking with a big team of media designers, industrial designers, graphic designers, a big development team, a support team etc like most of the other companies are. I don't invest time for a fancy manual, influencer style videos etc for an average product.
This is a 1 man company and there I got to do everything. And the most important time I spend is to make a top product. The manual is surely not my strongest point and as you surely already found out, English is not my native language and even worse my English at school was very basic. And before you give the advice that I should find someone to do it... I did multiple times and it always failed big time with much time and money/hardware lost! And there is no budget to hire someone for this. Believe me, there is a reason that Eurorack/Music companies dying these days...
And you are not talking about a manual like every other you probably compare with where everything is said within 20 pages. This is much more complex.
I do not agree and it is definitely not correct that they are RTFM responses. The opposite actually, I always try to help people with a solution and often point additionally to the part of the manual (which I simply very often use the search function to get to the part where things are described) so people can gather more information about it. I can't always explain every functionality again and again since many questions do repeat or are at least similar to others. Doesn't matter I always try to help... So the fact about RTFM responses is definitely wrong. I don't see myself with that. Not to mention all the support contacts I get outside of this forum from every social and external sources which I also always try to satisfy 24/7 (well sometimes I do sleep in between ).
Another thing, people are overwhelmed about (currently 188 pages) of the manual already (and the current preliminary version is not even formatted well yet...didn't find time yet to finish that including many small corrections and some more pictures). Adding loads of paragraphs would let the whole manual size increase to surely 250 pages. I don't think that this would make people more happy. I am not happy either about the current amount already, but there is just so much information and complexity.
A fact I can point you to is that the manual is always available as a document on github.. https://github.com/XORElectronics
Feel free to download it and edit it in your favorite word processor. That would make your current workflow easier. Maybe they are even functions where you can mark everything and just let the processor do its thing. Maybe you can share this then on the forum or so and maybe I can take over some improvements. (Not that I want to move any work to you! In the end it is of course my job to maintain the manual).
That said...I do agree that it can be better, I think adding many paragraphs is going to scare more people about the size of the manual, I do not agree about your 'RTFM' conclusion...support is given at any times even though this is a forum where people should help each other normally..but I often don't want to wait for someone to answer so I do that.
But, don't feel discouraged to suggest any improvements. If you follow it well then you can see that many many suggestions ended up in both the manual and the firmware and I tend to keep on doing this.
Cheers!
Firstly, I would like to extend my sincere apologies for the frankness in my previous communication regarding the RTFM paragraph in your forum posts. Upon reflection, I recognize that I may have inadvertently projected my own (easily annoyed) personality onto your communication, and for that, I am sorry.
However, I would like to respectfully express a differing perspective on the matter of keeping the manual concise. In my opinion, the advantages of having a manual with higher readability and clearer structure, even if it means adding a few extra pages, outweigh the potential drawbacks. I acknowledge that this is a subjective viewpoint, and I understand if it may not align with your priorities, particularly while you focus on perfecting the product.
Nevertheless, I truly appreciate the thorough response you provided. The insight you shared about the github document is invaluable and will undoubtedly save me a significant amount of work. If I find a moment to revise the manual in its entirety, I'll make sure to share it with the community.
Thank you again for your time and consideration. Keep up the excellent work!
(02-06-2024, 10:31 AM)XORadmin Wrote: I see your point and I do agree that the manual can be better. And with every new revision I do improve it.
On the other hand you are not talking with a big team of media designers, industrial designers, graphic designers, a big development team, a support team etc like most of the other companies are. I don't invest time for a fancy manual, influencer style videos etc for an average product.
This is a 1 man company and there I got to do everything. And the most important time I spend is to make a top product. The manual is surely not my strongest point and as you surely already found out, English is not my native language and even worse my English at school was very basic. And before you give the advice that I should find someone to do it... I did multiple times and it always failed big time with much time and money/hardware lost! And there is no budget to hire someone for this. Believe me, there is a reason that Eurorack/Music companies dying these days...
And you are not talking about a manual like every other you probably compare with where everything is said within 20 pages. This is much more complex.
I do not agree and it is definitely not correct that they are RTFM responses. The opposite actually, I always try to help people with a solution and often point additionally to the part of the manual (which I simply very often use the search function to get to the part where things are described) so people can gather more information about it. I can't always explain every functionality again and again since many questions do repeat or are at least similar to others. Doesn't matter I always try to help... So the fact about RTFM responses is definitely wrong. I don't see myself with that. Not to mention all the support contacts I get outside of this forum from every social and external sources which I also always try to satisfy 24/7 (well sometimes I do sleep in between ).
Another thing, people are overwhelmed about (currently 188 pages) of the manual already (and the current preliminary version is not even formatted well yet...didn't find time yet to finish that including many small corrections and some more pictures). Adding loads of paragraphs would let the whole manual size increase to surely 250 pages. I don't think that this would make people more happy. I am not happy either about the current amount already, but there is just so much information and complexity.
A fact I can point you to is that the manual is always available as a document on github.. https://github.com/XORElectronics
Feel free to download it and edit it in your favorite word processor. That would make your current workflow easier. Maybe they are even functions where you can mark everything and just let the processor do its thing. Maybe you can share this then on the forum or so and maybe I can take over some improvements. (Not that I want to move any work to you! In the end it is of course my job to maintain the manual).
That said...I do agree that it can be better, I think adding many paragraphs is going to scare more people about the size of the manual, I do not agree about your 'RTFM' conclusion...support is given at any times even though this is a forum where people should help each other normally..but I often don't want to wait for someone to answer so I do that.
But, don't feel discouraged to suggest any improvements. If you follow it well then you can see that many many suggestions ended up in both the manual and the firmware and I tend to keep on doing this.
Cheers!
Firstly, I would like to extend my sincere apologies for the frankness in my previous communication regarding the RTFM paragraph in your forum posts. Upon reflection, I recognize that I may have inadvertently projected my own (easily annoyed) personality onto your communication, and for that, I am sorry.
However, I would like to respectfully express a differing perspective on the matter of keeping the manual concise. In my opinion, the advantages of having a manual with higher readability and clearer structure, even if it means adding a few extra pages, outweigh the potential drawbacks. I acknowledge that this is a subjective viewpoint, and I understand if it may not align with your priorities, particularly while you focus on perfecting the product.
Nevertheless, I truly appreciate the thorough response you provided. The insight you shared about the github document is invaluable and will undoubtedly save me a significant amount of work. If I find a moment to revise the manual in its entirety, I'll make sure to share it with the community.
Thank you again for your time and consideration. Keep up the excellent work!
Hey Chriswest as a thought… putting it with clear instructions section by section on chat gpt4. im sure that it can make a great job. It would be almost free and only take few hours to check that it doesnt change any stuff and finding the right promt to optimise the text consistently.
I'm also finding the manual hard to understand. I don't think it's a revelation to anyone to describe the Nerdseq is super deep but also intimidating - even reading posts on Muffwiggler reveals accomplished patchers like State Azure making that point.
I suggestion from me would be to add to the appendix a series of step-by-step tutorials on certain techniques that will build a decent foundation of knowledge for the user. For example, a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up an arpeggio using a table (I'm still trying to do this months after buying my Nerdseq!).
Putting these in the appendix doesn't force any re-writes to the manual, or it could be a separate document. If you provide a template on how you want the tutotials to be written, you could even crowdsource the community for them.
04-17-2024, 08:26 PM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2024, 01:00 AM by proxemics.)
Having developed tech and leading project tech teams for a lot of my life, I see this thread as sincere people describing the same thing, but from different perspectives. I will say that what Thomas does is nearly superhuman... the complexity of Nerd is its greatest strength (flexibility and power), but that makes documenting it difficult. Honestly, this is why so little of our complex technical world is done by single artist creators anymore. The two other common options for creating complicated things are a company/corporation or a free software project. I'd love it if Thomas opened Nerdseq code as a free software project, where he'd accept pull requests. But that's entirely his choice.
That said, what if the manual was on Google Docs, or as markdown on Github? That way those of us English speakers, or who have technical writing or editing skills, who want could make proposals? It's a bit of a slog but I suspect some of us would be happy to help. Overleaf is also used by big scientific teams to collaborate on writing and format. A bit crazy and unlikely to work, but something like MediaWiki could use the discussion pages for us to work out how to document. But what's clear to me is that an ODT file in github is not going to allow us to make contributions.
Finally, @chriswest and @Manbearpig, in any big technical system (think a bit of music hardware, a programming language, or even a library) the amount of documentation produced unofficially is usually exponentially higher than that produced by the dev team. Thinking of Python or Javascript: countless books, videos, university courses have been created, and the official documentation is just a grain of sand on the beach -- and very different in structure or tone from learning guides. So I hope we users can produce more tutorials! Have you thought to ask https://www.youtube.com/@Buildmusic or https://www.reddit.com/user/DSP_Kills/ to do a simple tutorial on table arpeggiation?* I think we can agree that Thomas is doing a sincere effort to make a manual that follows the logic he uses to make the Nerd, but that's not the logic most users will bring when they try to learn it. We really need translators who can do that work for him.
I have to say, if I were talking about Roland or Korg I wouldn't be advocating our contributing so much, but it's pretty clear that Thomas is a one person operation, and as such he is WAY more responsive – and substantively so – than any bigger organization I've interacted with. I've written to Malekko, Ziqal, Roland, and other music manufacturers, and none has been as garrulous as Thomas. And I've seen feature request after feature request that he has not only acknowledged but actually added. So I really think he's successfully working at capacity to create a demon of a device, and we just need some community resources. The discord channel is active!
*I have done some cool things with tables, but never the simple intuitive arpeggiation I can get on a keystep, so I just record the latter into nerd! So I would love a table tutorial as well.
There is still some cleanup to do as the converter is lossy and markdown can't do everything that the existing document format does. It does feel feasible to bring this version up to parity with the existing manual and then leverage the community interest to improve things so I'm going to keep working on it and try to get all the pages formatted nicely to match the existing manual as best I can and into a state where people can make contributions.
I am already feeling that Markdown's limitations may become an issue. HTML on GitHub Pages would provide a lot more flexibility but would also make the barrier to entry higher for contributions.
@XORadmin: This is all your work, so please let me know if you would prefer that I pass ownership of the repo to you, or just remove it if it isn't what you'd like to see. I don't want this to end up making more work for you so please let me know if I've overstepped.
(07-07-2024, 05:36 PM)undercarbonated Wrote: Inspired by @proxemics' post, I made a first pass at moving the manual to Markdown on GitHub: https://github.com/martica/nerdseq_manual.
There is still some cleanup to do as the converter is lossy and markdown can't do everything that the existing document format does. It does feel feasible to bring this version up to parity with the existing manual and then leverage the community interest to improve things so I'm going to keep working on it and try to get all the pages formatted nicely to match the existing manual as best I can and into a state where people can make contributions.
I am already feeling that Markdown's limitations may become an issue. HTML on GitHub Pages would provide a lot more flexibility but would also make the barrier to entry higher for contributions.
@XORadmin: This is all your work, so please let me know if you would prefer that I pass ownership of the repo to you, or just remove it if it isn't what you'd like to see. I don't want this to end up making more work for you so please let me know if I've overstepped.
Heya, not sure if that would make things better. Would that mean I (or someone else) got to update a 2nd instead of 1 manual in the future? I am not sure if this is the best solution for a frequently increasing manual.
PLEASE use the search function if something have been asked or discussed before. Every (unnessesary) forum support means less time to develop! But of course, i am here to help!
(07-07-2024, 05:36 PM)undercarbonated Wrote: Inspired by @proxemics' post, I made a first pass at moving the manual to Markdown on GitHub: https://github.com/martica/nerdseq_manual.
There is still some cleanup to do as the converter is lossy and markdown can't do everything that the existing document format does. It does feel feasible to bring this version up to parity with the existing manual and then leverage the community interest to improve things so I'm going to keep working on it and try to get all the pages formatted nicely to match the existing manual as best I can and into a state where people can make contributions.
I am already feeling that Markdown's limitations may become an issue. HTML on GitHub Pages would provide a lot more flexibility but would also make the barrier to entry higher for contributions.
@XORadmin: This is all your work, so please let me know if you would prefer that I pass ownership of the repo to you, or just remove it if it isn't what you'd like to see. I don't want this to end up making more work for you so please let me know if I've overstepped.
Heya, not sure if that would make things better. Would that mean I (or someone else) got to update a 2nd instead of 1 manual in the future? I am not sure if this is the best solution for a frequently increasing manual.
Hey Thomas, agreed that this shouldn't be referred to as a public version of the manual. That kind of split would cause confusion, and I don't think anyone wants to "fork" it. We do want to help improve it (or augment it), however. I think I had earlier suggested a collaborative writing document like a google doc, overleaf, etc. I think @undercarbonated has a good idea of github -- we could submit pull requests that you could then merge if you thought it was okay.
Of course, you could just decline help, because it's true that help could mean more work for you. I do think, though, that it might be worth trying something, as Nerd keeps growing and more hands can make a difference. Can you think of a better way that we can try to help improve the manual?
07-11-2024, 07:52 PM (This post was last modified: 07-11-2024, 07:57 PM by undercarbonated.
Edit Reason: typo
)
My NerdSEQ is showing up today thanks to Perfect Circuit, so I'll probably spend time using it now instead of making trouble reformatting the manual.
If you are into the idea of the community contributions, there could be a build process that went from the individual files to a single PDF, so it would be possible to still have a single point where updates are made and then a web and a PDF manual both built from the one source. A community of creative nerds like you have here could be helpful in making the upkeep easier for you.
I'll set the repo to private to avoid any chance of confusion.
).