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Let´s discuss all praise and issues for the latest version of BforArtists here.
Just checked out the new material node layout, I think this will work out great, much cleaner and everything will be easier to find.
Beautiful. Yeah, good idea this thread. Eitherway, if there are bugs and things the tracker is a good place to put them.
I had a look at the new toolbar features, and I’m pretty happy about it. Specially the new apply deltas and the new scene toggle dropdown list, also the link to scene dropdown list. VERY USEFUL.
Also I liked the new way the Bake panel hides on other tabs in the release notes – though it seems I can’t find it at all to be honest. EDIT: put it in the tracker.
:dance:
Yes, that’s a bug. One of those mentioned regressions. When you merge Blender into Bforartists, and something is new in the Blender code, then the merge tries to use this newest code. And no matter how hard you try, something slips always through at one point. Happened here with the bake panel it seems.
I will have a look to fix this bug as fast as possible. It’s a show stopper.
Windows Zipfiles for 0.9.4 are up and running. Installers takes a bit longer, but should arrive today too.
I am wondering if it wouldn´t be better to provide a one document manual. – A PDF, that includes all of the chapters at once would be much more convenient to find a specific feature, since it can be found with the search function right away. For example, I was trying to turn on the “normal display” in the viewport, but had no clue in which of the documents I have to start searching. – One document would save lots of time in that regard.
The old dilemma ^^
Such a single pdf would be thousands of pages big. Very unhandy, very big loading times. And alone the table of contents would be this big that you can’t find anything at all. And it would make my life to maintain the manual very very hard.
I could of course go the Blender way, and make a page by page manual with a centralistic search. But this manual is even harder to maintain. And when you try to search anything in it, then you are completely lost. It is no full text search …
I had my thoughts at the manual dilemma too. I still search for ways to improve it. One direction was to start to write manual parts starting from the UI view. The chapter 3D View by tools – Tool Shelf.pdf is the first big starting point. The other direction was to provide the whole manual also in the format of libre office. When you really need everything in one PDF, here’s the way to do it. Just union all documents into one, and export as PDF
In the end the manual starts to eat me up alive. I do too much tasks at once already. And when i don’t develop, then i don’t have something to document. And so i try to make my life as easy as possible, while still trying to make the manual as useful as possible. For me the pdf’s in chapters is the optmial compromise at the moment.
Kind regards
Reiner
That´s exactly what I did. Since it is all numbered and organized very well, it is a matter of seconds to combine all of the PDF files into one document. The structure of all the seperate documents is kept as chapters with subchapters (the original chapters), so it is actually very easy to navigate from the PDF sidebar.
I am missing two chapters, that I could not download (see tracker). – I can add those as well later and share the complete PDF for others to download and see if it is of any use?
I used PDFsam to convert all of the documentation at once. http://www.pdfsam.org/
As a side note, I simply searched for “normal display” in the combined document and the answer came right up. So it was a 10 second instead of 5 minute search.
The two missing pdf’s were typoes in the download links. Thanks for reporting. The links are fixed now
And thanks for the link. This tool looks interesting! Just curious, how many pages does the pdf have now? EDIT, ah, the screenshot shows. 2047 pages
Thanks for fixing the links, in total the manual has 2177 pages and 85mb. Not too bad I believe. I am not going to read it through from cover to cover, but for searching and quick reference this is great.
If you like I can create a cover and instruction preface so it can be shared in the support section?
I would love this copy of the whole documentation together, because it’s true.. in the Blender Help online and with the disjointed PDF files, searching for something abstract is almost impossible, but in a PDF, with linking and the searching system it is quicker and easier on the abstract search.
The search and chapters in the PDF is worth the page load wait. I would load a PDF manual in an ebook like that anyway, with that many pages sometimes, I’d consider it pretty standard.
An alternative is making a wiki page with the PDF’s, so things can be indexed and also edited collaboratively. I think you may need to delegate this work, create tasks and assign to someone..! That I CAN do for the cause. Right now I don’t know what the documentation editing workflow is.
I would include the PDF files in chapter and a complete version with the latest release of BFA and linked from the UI – and online – with maybe even option of online chapter by chapter download/open or whole manual download/open.
:dance:
The idea is not bad. But let me sleep a night over it. The problem here is that i would have to maintain this file now too. More work, and i am already down to a crawl and ways over my limits. I don’t want to spread me even thinner.
I uploaded the combined manual to wetransfer, the link will be up for a week. Just try if you see it as usefull?
Here you go … https://we.tl/MA2GOAzQBt
I would, just like Draise wrote, include the PDF with the release of BforArtists, so you only have to download it once and can access it via the link inside the application.
The merged manual has its pros. But it has also its cons. It would increase the traffic. It would make me more work. And including the manual into Bforartists would add around 100 Mb to every binary download, and increase the traffic and download times. And while my webspace is pretty big, it’s not unlimited. That’s why i would want to have the manual separated from the software.
As told, let me sleep a night over this problem. This is not a decision that should be rushed
Yes, sure sleep on it. I would only update the whole manual with every new release of BfA and then it is literally one minute of work to combine all the existing PDFs into one document.
– If it really creates more traffic is to be found out, because right now I downloaded the manuals again and again inside the browser, opposed to only downloading everything once. – Let´s see.
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