Audacity Forum

waxcylinder wrote:An aside here - I'm pondering why on earth we promote obsolete unsupported 1.2 on the front page of the alpha Manual

"Click here for legacy 1.2 documentation. " it says in the light green box

You would be surprised how many still use 1.2 e.g. the people who like to see microseconds in the selection values.

We should probably get rid of the 1.2 legacy docs on the main site and make them available on the SF file release system instead.

I looked into it all a while ago but I haven't got time or energy to discuss it now on the mailing lists.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:You would be surprised how many still use 1.2 e.g. the people who like to see microseconds in the selection values.

You'd be surprised that I actually wouldn't be surprised ...

All I'm surprised at is that we are featuring legacy, obsolete, 1.2 on our bleeding-edge alpha Manual

And surely the solution for those folk is to put microseconds in 2.0.7 - as surely it must be a regression if we had it in 1.2.x

Peter

steve wrote:

waxcylinder wrote:I tried to remove one of your unslicks yesterday by adding a clear link for Audacity downloading to the Manual's Front page. Is that now a slick?

I think that its slick for the on-line manual, but not so slick for the downloaded manual.

I agree, but we don't want to be post-processing the dumped online Manual at release time unless we can script that.

steve wrote:For the vast majority of users, the downloaded manual was included in their Audacity download.

Yes but that doesn't mean they are all going to automatically get the new release when it comes out. The Audacity software won't be telling them a new release is out.

steve wrote:Perhaps a "more slick" alternative would be a link for "Latest Version", or "Update Audacity".

A link for the latest version is in the Sidebar in the Manual already.

steve wrote:I couldn't find anything obvious in the manual telling me how to update to the latest version of Audacity.

It would be much better to fix that in the software, but as it is now, I guess there could be a FAQ about it.

waxvylinder wrote:I *really* don't want to clutter the green div

Then I suggest you change your current link to say "Download latest Audacity" or similar and change the title of the div to "Resources". Otherwise your link may look like it gives help on how to download Audacity.

On the whole, I think we can manage with the link removed.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:

steve wrote:Perhaps a "more slick" alternative would be a link for "Latest Version", or "Update Audacity".

A link for the latest version is in the Sidebar in the Manual already.

It is in the 2.0.5 Manual - but in the Alpha 2.0.6 there is no "Useful External Links" nav pane on the left hand side.

Peter

waxcylinder wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:

steve wrote:Perhaps a "more slick" alternative would be a link for "Latest Version", or "Update Audacity".

A link for the latest version is in the Sidebar in the Manual already.

It is in the 2.0.5 Manual - but in the Alpha 2.0.6 there is no "Useful External Links" nav pane on the left hand side.

That is because the "Useful External Links" sidebar portlet is added to the released Manual by scripts/mw2html_audacity/sidebar.html in the Audacity source code when the Manual is dumped from manual.audacityteam.org/man.

I suppose we could add the External Links sidebar to the development Manual and remove the addition of sidebar.html from the script. Considering only "advanced" users of -alpha builds should be using the development Manual, is it worth the work? Anyone landing at the development Manual has a clear link to the download for the current release (in the green box).


Gale

waxcylinder wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:You would be surprised how many still use 1.2 e.g. the people who like to see microseconds in the selection values.

You'd be surprised that I actually wouldn't be surprised ...

All I'm surprised at is that we are featuring legacy, obsolete, 1.2 on our bleeding-edge alpha Manual

It probably needs to be there for now because searches for "audacity manual" (with or without quotes) from the browser search box return http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/ above http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/ . So 1.2 users who actually want the 1.2 Manual are likely to end up at the development Manual.

I've changed the site name of http://manual.audacityteam.org from "Audacity Manual" to "Audacity Development Manual" so the page title now says "Alpha Development Manual". That may push the development Manual down the search results. And by the time that happens, I agree we won't need to add links anywhere else to the 1.2 Manual except one offsite link on http://audacityteam.org/ .

Note that searching for "audacity manual" (without quotes) from the search box on http://audacityteam.org/ and for "audacity manual" (with quotes) from the browser's search bar returns http://audacityteam.org/manual-1.2/ at the top of the results. That's why we should remove the legacy docs from the main web site.

waxcylinder wrote:And surely the solution for those folk is to put microseconds in 2.0.7 - as surely it must be a regression if we had it in 1.2.x

I can't find why it was omitted. I think it should be added back but Steve thinks these requests are bonkers/lizards as far as I know.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:Steve thinks these requests are bonkers/lizards as far as I know.

Not quite that bad
I think it was a mistake that microseconds was put into Audacity 1.2. If it hadn't been then we wouldn't be having this conversation now (rods for backs ).

Back in the old 1.2.6 days, did anyone ever ask how to delete just a few microseconds, or complain that when they deleted 15 microseconds the track was then 33 microseconds shorter? Probably there were less people posting questions then than now.

I do have some sympathy for those that request microseconds because milliseconds is not quite enough for measuring sample periods in "normal" time units, but 6 decimal places is over the top for audio. The issue may become irrelevant when we have James' new track panel with its fancy new time track.

steve wrote:I do have some sympathy for those that request microseconds because milliseconds is not quite enough for measuring sample periods in "normal" time units, but 6 decimal places is over the top for audio. The issue may become irrelevant when we have James' new track panel with its fancy new time track.

Old habits seem to die hard (or we were correct in 1.2). No-one to whom I've counter-suggested four decimal places would buy it.


Gale