Is MuseScore documentation all it should be? How should users be guided to learn software or an upgraded version?
I wonder what could (or should) be done to make MuseScore's documentation more inviting. My comment is based on the number of questions here and in Facebook's MuseScore Discussion and Support Group that concern very basic functionalities. I absolutely do not intend to be impolitic in my remarks, and I apologize in advance if my words come across that way; instead, I'm just not understanding why people who are enthusiastic about a software program wouldn't invest a bit of time in taking steps to learn it rather than seemingly leaping in and winging it.
I know nothing of pedagogy in general, but I had many years of experience in the real world troubleshooting Microsoft Office for end users with all levels of skill and experience. I was patient and calm, and I would never say (or even imply) 'RTFM' in a million years. But still ... we have to walk before we run, and long-term bad habits are generally avoided by acquiring 'best practices' early on. As concerns MuseScore, everything appears to be in place to facilitate that - but many people apparently resist the approach that is likely to yield the most productive results in the least time in most cases.
Let me go out of my way to say that no one should be discouraged from asking questions! I am actually perplexed and a bit frustrated by my own failure to grasp what most efficiently teaches new information to people. Everybody's different, but every new skill has a learning curve to some extent. Is there any possible means of effectively making it less steep or less intimidating that hasn't already been explored?
I'm cross-posting this to the MuseScore Discussion and Support Group at Facebook.
Comments
Well, if you want the documentation to get improved, RTFM would be the answer, wouldn't it? :-)
Improving something that isn't read seems pretty useless?
I guess the real issue is to make MuseScore as intuitive and as simple to use as we possibly can, as many users don't read documentation anyway...
In reply to Well, if you want the by Jojo-Schmitz
I wondered how widespread that is.
And within 'documentation', I would include the category of videos, too. I don't follow them personally, but I'm guessing that there are both official tutorials and unofficial ones as well (i.e., created by developers and end users, respectively).
There are a number of avenues that have been and continue to be explored, including soem of the things mentioned already:
- the handbook
- the videos
- sometimes deliberately favoring simplicity over adding more features
- the how-to's and tutorials (not always as easy to find as they could be)
- the new context help facility built in to MuseScore 2.
On top of this, I've been keeping a low profile on this until we are ready to make an official announcement, but do re-read this from a few weeks back:
https://musescore.org/en/node/49166
In addition to the part that pretty much just goes into more detail on what I already listed above, take note of the part with my name in it. The book is almost ready, and will hopefully be valuable to those who wish more in-depth documentation.
What about the new Help system in 2.0, where you secondary-click an element and choose "Help" from the context menu? If it could be expanded a little more, this could be a great way to get people to RTFM. The only trouble is that the system is incomplete—see https://musescore.org/en/help/staff%2Btext and https://musescore.org/en/help/stem, for example.
EDIT: I just discovered a curious issue, perhaps related to recent changes in managing the Handbook related to the German version. For elements where there are results for the context help system, each result is listed twice, in English and German, like this:
Grace note
Note input
Replace pitches without changing rhythms
Noteneingabe
Vorschlagsnoten
Tonhöhen ersetzen ohne Rhythmus zu verändern
(Obviously this is coming from an English-speaking perspective; I don't know what other localized versions' results would be.)
Should a bug report be filed?
In reply to What about the new Help by Isaac Weiss
Yes, looks like a bug to me
In reply to Yes, looks like a bug to me by Jojo-Schmitz
Fixed for the language issue.
I'll come back to this issue regarding labeling the handbook/howtos/tutorials with the proper help labels.