Well if your hopes were that PI would get some good press and exposure from this thread.....
From CCD New Astro:
When I did the Zone System book, there were a LOT of very good books on
Photoshop itself, but very few that provided a useful conceptual structure for
how to use Photoshop for astronomy images.
And there had been quite a few good books on using Photoshop long before that.
But, again, nothing about how to use it for astronomy.
From what I'm hearing, Pix Insight really needs someone to put together a how-to
book or web site or help file. The software itself would seem to be way out in
front of information about how to use it.
Having long been a technical writer in the software industry, I have seen that
happen many times. I've even seen it kill some good software packages.
My feedback re: PI would be - a good manual and/or help file appear to be
overdue.
When I was a technical writer, we used to joke that the programming guys didn't
seem to realize that it took nearly as long to document software as it does to
develop it. <g> It's not _actually_ true, but close enough. It takes a lot of
time and effort to properly document software, and the more complex and the more
it represents a new paradigm, the more important that is and the longer it
takes.
I think that PI's value would be a lot more obvious, and it would be adopted
more widely, if the hundreds of hours it would take to properly document were
devoted to it.
The fact that it takes days just to get into the forum would suggest that folks
are, however, already too busy on the programming side. It's a case of what
comes first, the cart or the horse/the features or the documentation. The truth
is you need both.
More than achieving my own understanding of PI (unlikely as things stand; my
schedule at Tzec Maun is too busy to figure stuff out for myself these days), I
would like to see a good manual or at least a good help file. When I think of
some of the software we have adopted lately (like Bob Denny's ACP), we did so
because we saw that there was adequate documentation and support. It's very hard
for many of us to commit time to software that doesn't appear to have the level
of support we require. With ACP, we saw documentation that was highly detailed,
a forum that was highly responsive, and we were members of that forum within a
few hours of buying the software. That kind of stuff matters - a lot. You could
have the greatest product in the world, but if you don't have the secondary
characteristics that smooth the way, it still might fail to get the attention it
deserves, or it might get the wrong sort of attention.
I appreciate that someone mentioned that the PI folks are looking for feedback;
you have mine. It's not about features; it's about making the software more
accessible, and more visibly supported for new users.
Ron Wodaski
