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@icedquinn I think the idea is that websites need to gain consent in order to use cookies.

@zleap it hasn't accomplished anything other than spamming up webpages and annoying the shit out of everyone.

@icedquinn @zleap Well, now I can at least give a nice "f u" when someone want me to allow Zuck and Pichai to track me

@Archivist @icedquinn I just tell people I don't use faceook, may have to start assuming some fb users are thick as they don't get it

btw who is Pichai

@zleap @icedquinn Just the CEO of the Alphabet Group that contains Google, Youtube and all their other pet projects

@zleap @icedquinn

The fact you never heard of him is sign he takes his role as a villain very seriously

@Archivist @icedquinn Yeah, or that I don't use / care about google enough. I do know that @cwebber is one of the people behind Activity Pub.

@zleap

I use Google mostly because (ironically) the GNU guys make a terrible job at documenting stuff in a navigatable way. They also have to discover PDF as an information format as for most of them.

@icedquinn @cwebber

@Archivist @icedquinn @cwebber

I am not sure how to address this, we need to educate people, thing is when you document you start to realise how easy or difficult your software is to use, as you need to think as a user and not a techy / programmer that created it.

@zleap

As someone that has to teach people how to use git and had to make my own textbook for it. I concur.

I would also say you don't have mastery over that you can't explain to a non-expert. This is part of what makes me wary of most GNU projects: the bad documentation is a sign of a more devious, subtle problem

@icedquinn @cwebber

@Archivist @icedquinn @cwebber

Good point,
LibreOffice has a whole team of people working on Documentation, they care about the project enough to create good documentation.

I am guessing as you can also buy copies of the manuals it is a good way to generate income for the project overall.

@libreoffice

@zleap

The Document Foundation is quite wholesome. Too bad I am terrible with WYSIWYG, LaTeX is the only thing I can use for making something even bearble to see, what I make with WYSIWYG is in the realm of eldrich horrors

@icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

@Archivist @icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

I am with you on LaTeX, it is handy to know how to use LibreOffice though,

@zleap

I am pretty familiar with Calc and Draw, but letting me in charge of doing something consistent with something that is not automated is clearly a way to end up with Cthulu taking a nap in your bathtub

@icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

@Archivist @icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

I am currently writing the OU Space Science Club newsletter in LaTeX, I like being able to do \href{url}{link text} or from issue 3 use
\includefile{filename} to include other sections, this also makes re-arranging them a very simple process.

@zleap

And being able to have a nice blue box with consistent rounded corners and a nice consistent gradient background, beautifully arranged title sections and consistent and easy page numbering... It is a godsend

@icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

@Archivist @icedquinn @cwebber @libreoffice

Indeed, are you using tcolorbox for that or similar, nice package, getting my head round it slowly.

@Archivist @zleap @cwebber @libreoffice structural editing. this used to exist (kind of) in WordPerfect since you could create your own style tags with reveal codes.

I've been working on moving my docs to either Scribble or Booklit. Being able to customize the structure tags is kind of important. But then in an old life i bothered to write full tech documentation for a module (which then nobody ever used, they janked some shit with python anyway) and it had the entire gambit of reference docs, index, and was organized to be read front-to-back :blobcatsweats:

@Archivist @cwebber @libreoffice @zleap i was more excited about booklit syntax before i read the part that parsing is somewhat selective. you have to look up mid-parse if a function wants you to parse the body text or just hand it in as-is which complicates things a bit but we’ll see.

scribble is a bit onerous to parse but i’ve done most of that work and you just get a pile of plain old s-expressions to run through to whatever format you want.

but in the end its either \foo{...} or @foo{...} most of the time.

@icedquinn

Yeah but why not just use TeX with next to no premade macros? Would it be that different? I feel like simple TeX-like macros would be easier to implement and do the job mostly fine while compartimenting the workload more easily

@libreoffice @cwebber @zleap

@Archivist @cwebber @libreoffice @zleap texmacs is also a thing which needs some polish but i did like it. they combined the semantic tag markup stuff with WYSIWYG.

@icedquinn

New project: making an "HyperTeX" processor that generate html with a TeX syntax. Probably a few hundred lines of C, but definitely useful.

@libreoffice @cwebber @zleap

@icedquinn

Booklit doesn't really follow the correct syntax though, and it doesn't have environments either. It doesn't support defining new commands in itself or all of the bells and whisles of TeX

@libreoffice @cwebber @zleap

@zleap @Archivist @cwebber the way people consume documentation has changed somewhat since the early emacs times. you were writing reference manuals as an educated computer scientist to be read by another educated computer scientist.

i'd assume nowadays people are just looking for copy/paste cookbooks.
@zleap @Archivist @cwebber i've seen this more friendly labelled "task specific documentation" or something close to this. basically picking some tasks the software is used for and tracing the steps to do that (as in GOMS)

some of this stuff is actually full of documentation but it's in a very dry and painful format; ex. trying to learn how to encode with ffmpeg's manual is garbage because its just a heap of switches and you will need possibly no more than 6 of them to do any particular job.

@icedquinn

I am generally adopting a mix between a pedagogic approach and a good indexed list of examples used as exercises when the doc is used as teaching materials

@cwebber @zleap

@icedquinn @cwebber @Archivist

The idea of reading and researching is lost on many I see that many sites now have an article with things like 5 min read, so they have an idea of how long.

The recent creative Education course I did is meant to be an hour, it takes longer, when you start / stop / rewind the video to take notes etc.

In some cases you watch a video twice, once to watch it, the 2nd time to take notes and then a 3rd time to perhaps make more notes,. first time you may even stop / start to record time indexes of interesting points.

@zleap they don't drill the feynman technique in to people when they give them those fancy degrees. @cwebber @Archivist

@icedquinn @cwebber @Archivist

Thanks for that. I have just looked it up and added that (and some other links) to my StudySupportBlog

personaljournal.ca/studysuppor

I want to try and help distance learners, so am using the blog and discourse.qoto.org to try and create a platform where learners can discuss what they are learning or related topics.

Great doing courses online, even better to discuss the content with others to help with learning.

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