[...]
>
>> I also use MinGW for my windows build. True, there's no quick
>> installer but hey, if the guy is not able to install MinGW (which is
>> not that hard), that guy should certainly not mess with your source.
>> However, I heard of Dev-C++, which is an IDE which includes MinGW as
>> the compiler. Maybe they have an installer.
>
[...]
>
> That reminds me of a friend who had a Lotus sports car. Â English was
> his second language so I didn't always get everything he said, but he
> had lived in Kansas and the only mechanic was 100 miles away. Â The
> mechanic would not give estimates or give opinions of what was wrong
> or even listen to what the owner wanted done. Â You gave him your Lotus
> and he would let you know when it was ready and how much it cost. Â If
> he was in a good mood, he would tell you what he did.
>
That looks like me! :)
> My friend was talking to him one day about how the gears would knash
> if he wasn't very careful and double clutched just right. Â It seems
> there were no synchronizers in this gearbox by design. Â The mechanic
> said that anyone who can't shift without synchronizers doesn't deserve
> to drive a Lotus.
>
> Sound familiar?
>
Car / computer metaphors? Yes. They also knash if you're not careful,
you know. The situation here is slightly different: it's about someone
who perhaps wants to hack a Forth but have no clue about how one
builds software. It is like (carefully shifting...) your friend tries
to change the motor of his car whereas he doesn't even know how to
change a flat tire.
But that's yet another instance of the mainstream/expert debate. I
think that a common error is to try to address both kind of audiance.
I think it is wrong because by doing this, one builds an imaginary
typical user and make arbitrary assumptions about hiser skills; and
that imaginary "mid-skilled" user, between newbie and expert,
mismatches with all of your thousand real users. The true newbies
won't cope, and the experts may not get what they want because it was
something above your imaginary average user.
So basically, it's either "for dummies" or "for expert". That's why I
suggested the OP not to bother too much with an auto-installer (for
dummies); I would further suggest that he would invest in a detailled
description of the source files, project build, dependancies, etc. As
an expert, that's the things I like to find; on the contrary, I don't
like unix "expert dummy" autoconf and such stuff, which leaves me
sometimes helpless when it fails. But sometimes, I'm also a dummy user
and I like to run auto-installer and have the thing work out-of-the-
box.
This way, the heart of the problem reveals itself: you have to build
the road from "dummy user" to "expert user"; in other words you become
a teacher.
Being conscious that you're taking the role of the teacher when
writing who is in charge to bring the reader from newbie grade to
expert grade while writing the doc helps a lot. When designing a UI,
this means sort of embedding a teacher in the app (one may think about
"wizzards", but I rather think about task-oriented helpers).
But I digress.
Amicalement,
Astrobe
