[kepler-dev] [Ptolemy] Re: Actor documentation

[Laura L. Downey]

Well in that case you would in essence be creating a new actor based on the
basic sinewave actor and you would be the owner/creator and have edit
permission for the documentation.

But do you want someone else to come along who may change something
incorrectly in the documentation?

I'm playing devil's advocate here.  As I said, pros and cons to both
approaches.

Laura L. Downey
Senior Usability Engineer
LTER Network Office
Department of Biology, MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM  87131-0001
505.277.3157 phone
505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Cataldo [mailto:acataldo at eecs.berkeley.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:12 PM
To: Christopher Brooks
Cc: Laura L. Downey; ptresearch at chess.eecs.berkeley.edu; 'Kepler-Dev'
Subject: Re: [Ptolemy] Re: [kepler-dev] Actor documentation

I agree. I think the being able to edit the documentation would be 
useful even for Kepler. Imagine I model some physical phenomenon with a 
Sinewave actor.  The documentation for the Sinewave actor says nothing 
about the physical process I am tryiing to model.  I might want to 
change the documentation for this instance of the actor to say what the 
actor really does with respect to the model I'm looking at.

Cheers,
Adam

Christopher Brooks wrote:
> Here's a half baked idea.
> 
> I think it would be nice if users could update and comment on
> documentation.
> 
> I was thinking it would be cool to have some sort of wiki for actor
> documentation, or at least something so that users could annotate
> actor documentation.  The PhP website uses this to great advantage,
> see
> http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.eregi.php 
> 
> The beauty is that users tend to make note of things that weren't
> clear or "aha!" moments that they had.  Yah, the comments don't
> make great reading, but I've found them really useful for PhP, where
> I'm by no means an expert and often flailing around for a quick 
> solution.
> 
> _Christopher
> 
> --------
> 
>     
>     At 10:58 AM 12/19/2005 -0700, Laura L. Downey wrote:
>     >I'm a little confused here.  Why would the user want to edit the
>     >documentation?  Or is this "edit" feature supposed to be for creators
of
>     the
>     >documentation?
>     
>     Yes, or to modify the documentation for an instance of the actor,
>     or to add documentation for a composite actor.  Can you think of a
better
>     phrase than "Edit Documentation"?
>     
>     Edward
>     
>     [LLD>] 
>     Oh I'm not opposed to the phrase "Edit Documentation," I was just
thinking
>     that many of the Kepler users would not ever edit the documentation,
that i
>    s
>     sort of like an advanced feature -- maybe only creators of new actors
(the
>     owners) would have the permission to edit the associated
documentation.  I
>     would also expect that we wouldn't want the documentation edited on
the bas
>    e
>     set of actors that ships with Kepler.  But maybe my assumptions are
wrong..
>    .
>     I can't see any issue though with Ptolemy putting in "Edit
Documentation" a
>    s
>     a menu item.  Kepler can certainly hide or reveal the menu item as
>     appropriate, I would assume.  (un oh more assumptions ) :-)
>      
>     Laura
>     
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