Quick card for Model side modeling, opinion plz

[borgcone]

Related topic: Full list of toolbar icons of tS7 Model side?

In this difficult time, afflicted people might get angry at this theme that is perhaps useless for peace effort.

I'm making another Quick Card of Model side. The design concept is; Cram "State-transition diagrams" and "Concise short-short tutorials for ALL modeling tools" in a sheet with minimal words!

(tentative title) trueSpace7.6 Model View - Unofficial Quick Card - Navigation and Modeling
Preliminary version 0.01 (300 dpi, zipped in 5.8 MB)

Rough image

Is it too crammed? Should I separate the state-transition map? Is the title appropriate? Any suggestions?
Please give me your thoughts and opinions.

Details:
The official trueSpace 7.61 PDFMan by Caligari covers a broad range of topics but it's too long for users to read through (especially busy person, non-English readers, or other potential users who does not so involved in tS). For example, readers should take time to understand that: sweeping a 2D curve generates not a polyhedron but a NURBS, converting a NURBS to a polyhedron is irreversible, or a trimming curve is for a NURBS but a polygon copy is for a polyhedron.

IMHO, one of the reason is because the PDFMan does not have any state-transition map to take a brief look at the whole relationship between each state of objects. The card (in a current preliminary version) consists of several sections in a sheet:
- 11 ways to make a shape like a mushroom
- State transition diagrams of objects
- Example use of icons for editing/deformation
- Example use of other related icons: Navigation, Real-time rendering, Modeling, Grouping, Axes, bending by Inverse Kinematics(IK), etc.
- Pseudo (seeming) sculpting by shaders
- File formats of loading/saving

It is not so detailed as the official PDFMan or other unofficial tutorials but I hope it helps busy people understand tS's modeling features comprehensively from a broader perspective.

[trueBlue]

You are doing great work with this!
Personally, I think it is too busy

I do not like PDF help files!
I know they are outdated but I prefer Compiled Help Files with a Table of Contents
Select an item of interest from the Table of Contents on the left, that shows a detailed explanation on the right

The YafaRay4tS Help file

[borgcone]

Personally, I think it is too busy ... I prefer Compiled Help Files with a Table of Contents ... Select an item ... shows a detailed explanation on the right ...

I think it's busy and prefer a side TOC, too, but cannot decide easily how much it should get closer to the amount of the PDFMan's information, and whether the state-transit diagram separated from others can be useful or not.

Incidentally, the tS5 reference manual (Japanese edition) was a single 29 MB PDF file but had a TOC in the left side.

2a.jpg (19.35 KiB) Viewed 1621 times

[Cellulo]

Nice work Borgone, there is lots of information in your quickcard but maybe too much information, it's hard to read from my point of view.

I know you have put a lot of effort to do it but trueblue is right, the better solution it's to make a chm file, you can extract a chm file like a zip file with 7-zip or winrar to retrieve the main file for the html help workshop tool, after that you can modify all pages because they are simply html pages easy to edit and easy to compile in chm format, and the best you can use gif animation images for the description of a specific tool of the modelside in the pages.

In fact i have already begin this work (but not finished yet ) with the "Fakespace manual" html pages from KENJI HASEGAWA (nananaFactory homepage), it's a cool manual for beginners, i have added gif animation for some tools and when you see the gif animated image description from a tool, you catch immediatly the meaning of the tool, it's a long task to make the gif animation, see my list of freeware tools to grab the best tool to capture animation in gif format but in 256 colors only, gif format have his colors limit.

[borgcone]

... the better solution it's to make a chm file ...

The reasons I avoid any chm file are (1) its less portability for OS and (2) relatively short life time of chm reader applications. It has fewer chance to attract potential users who use OS other than Windows and does not use any chm readers, and there is a possibility that it becomes relatively obsolete because there is no guarantee that each of reader apps continues to support both latest OS and chm files for long time (e.g. till Win 15 or 20).

I've liked chm in the late 1990s and made several ones (unrelated to tS) for my clients. But, as you know, such older chm files can be displayed only by winhelp.exe. I knew the planned obsolescence strategy after the WinHelp did not work on the later OS.

In contrast to that, it looks like JPG/PNG have the best portability and a longer life than CHM. To cover the disadvantages of JPG/PNG (less searchability, indexing, size performance, etc.) a single sheet "Quick Card" style can be a choice. Of course, if I would like to maintain to update for a long time, I must continue to maintain the source file (SVG by Inkscape in the present but may change in future) so that it follows the latest OS.

I would like to make also a larger tS document with multiple pages if no one does not begin, but I know there are many continuing or done projects by several pioneers.

There seems to be too few tS user in the world (How few sites of tS are!). I would like to increase documents not for experts but for potential users who does not know the tS's full features (and/or who dislikes reading long text).

... i have added gif animation for some tools ... see my list of freeware tools ...

Where is it? I sometimes visit your "flat2d.com - PROGRAMS - 3D - trueSpace 7.6 MS & Resources". The GIFs are in the ZIP/RAR list?

I searched and found your full text page "flat2d.com/download/Truespace/trueSpace76_Modelside_Edition_V2.1.txt" with the word "nananaFactory", and found his almost empty blog "namacos.asablo.jp/blog/" says "ruins of the nananaFactory" (if I would translate the Japanese words literally).

[Cellulo]

See my PM Borgcone.

[borgcone]

See my PM Borgcone.

Thanks! Great work!