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Re: Sad... [message #21637 is a reply to message #21567]

Sat, 30 May 2009 15:33

gprentice
Messages: 260
Registered: November 2005
Location: New Zealand

Experienced Member

I am completely mystified by the comments about making theIDE more beginner friendly. It is less complicated than Visual studio and C++Builder. What is lacking is information on how to use it. Even where documentation exists, it is hard to find and out of date.

Also I think that "being vocal that it's not cheap to switch to U++" would be completely wrong and achieve nothing other than put people off. I doubt if the learning curve is any worse than wxWidgets, VS, Fox, C++Builder, Delphi or anything else.

There seems to be a large amount of good quality documentation already but as I already said, it's badly organized. I will post another thread about how I think the help should be organized.

Here's an example of problems I have with the help.

I picked the "button" example. I see a call to Format that looks a bit like printf - so I want to find out about Format. Here's what I did. Open help and type Format in the search box - lots of things but nothing about format. Put cursor on Format in button.cpp - try "context goto" - takes me to Format(Date) in TimeDate.cpp - click the little green box and we go to src.tpp which seems to be documentation about Format(Date) with a blue hyper-link looking "Format" which isn't a hyperlink at all. So go back to button.cpp with cursor on Format and try goto definition. Nothing happens. With cursor on Format, try "search symbol" - now click the yellow circle in the navigator bar and we finally get to the definition of Convert::Format in Convert.cpp. Right click the green square and we go to src.tpp which seems to be documentation for Format, but... it doesn't tell me what I want to know. Well, I'm sick of looking so now I give up!

Lets try searching help for "overview" - we get "Overview of U++ containers - NTL". NTL ?? - what the heck is NTL? No sign of the "overview" listed on the website under "getting started with U++". Why is some of the documentation on the website and not in the IDE help.

So lets look at the website "getting started" -> overview. It starts with "whetting your appetite" then - "Ultimate++ promises radical reduction of code complexity" and finishes with "But be careful there" followed by a lot of gibberish! I'm sure there's a lot of important information on the "overview" web page but none of it helped me get started with U++.

How about covering the important topics of using theIDE and the layout designer?

Why is the double drop down arrow thing in theIDE for build mode/method too narrow to read the text and why is it not two separate combo boxes?

Regarding starting with the active package when U++ starts - I would have thought it would be easy to make this optional and disabled for new installations.

I think that improving the "help" would make U++ easier to use and more attractive to newcomers but I suspect it's still going to be hard to convince anyone that it has any advantages over say, wxWidgets, and claims of reduction of code complexity won't convince very many people. A better organized help should make it easier for people to see what U++ capabilities are and how to get started (using the creating a project from scratch topic).

Graeme
(with no H)

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