Documentation

[Lister]

<rant>I have unsucessfully tried to play with netremote now for 2 weeks. I have played with everything possible, yet nothing seems to work. Where is the test file? Like one button, you press it, and the start menu pops up or something? Fellas, I went out and spent over $200 pickin up a PocketPC, a wireless card, and some SD memory. I'll be damned if I give up and waste that money just because I seem to be an idiot. With a CS degree. From RIT. </rant>

Ok, I really like the idea of netremote. I'm sure for many of you it's the glue that holds your entertainment center together. That's what I want. However, I seem doomed to failure. I read in a few threads that Ben wants to start the documentation. Here's a great idea. Since this program is in "open beta" why don't you just write a quick skeleton and post the txt/doc/tex file and let people go nuts? Or try to get the Wiki page going again? ANYTHING to help me and I'm sure lots of others out. Hell, as soon as I get it working, I'm going to see what I can do about porting it over to linux. I want to be able to use this with mythTV. If you don't like doing documentation, let me help. While I hate it as well, I know *exactly* what I can't figure out, so I don't think it will be that hard to write up a quick skeleton.

Please don't take this as someone pissed off. I'm far from it. Just very frustrated. I want to help netremote, and as I see it right now, documentation is lagging far behind everything else.

[jeroen020]

I and probably many others can understand your frustration. Netremote is extremely powerful and flexible, but still has a steeplearning curve. I've been using Netremote since, well, a long time, and still sometimes I have trouble keeping up with all the changes and updates - you have to sift through a lot of threads here to use new versions to their full potential.

Part of the complexity come out of the fact that NR really shines when integrated with JRMC, Tonto and Girder - all of which aren't the easiest to use products either. But in their respective fields, they offer determined users unparalleled functionality. So even if NR were to bee a breeze to setup and run, it would still require an investment of time in the products it depends on.

On the other hand, much has improved already. The desktop suite makes installation of the server components much easier. The new upgrade function for NR clients should make upgrading to new versions of NR a no-brainer. And Ben has announced he'll spend most effert now on bug fixing, for a stable and hopefully easier to understand 1.0 version. Feature creep is tempting, but only for existing users (so maybe us experienced guys should hold back our feature requests a little...).

I've spent some time in Wiki making pages for the Siemens Simpad device with NR. I think Wiki is a good way of documenting NR and I will try to spend some more time to describe more stuff. If you're willing to do the same from a beginner's point of view, I and others will be glad to help you with it.

[Ben S]

I certainly understand your frustration. Every time I sit down to document, I end up losing my initiative because there is -so- much to document.

Believe it or not, I need to look at my code sometimes to figure out how to do things. That does not bode well for the rest of you that don't have the code to look at.

To echo Jeroen's sentiment - My intention in setting up the wiki was for users to "give back" to the NetRemote community by helping me document some things. Unfortunately in it's current state (a completely free side project of mine), I cannot find/make enough time to do new development, bug fixes, and put together solid documentation.

I wish there was some magic machine that would document as I develop, but alas, that does not exist.

My current plan is to wrap up the current pre-release and then focus almost entirely on documenting what's there.

[Lister]

Have you ever tried using Doxygen? It will give you basic documentation of your code, and then you can fill in the blanks later...

[Ben S]

The problem is I don't think code documentation is what's required here, it's general use documentation, Tonto design documentation, special features documentation, etc.

Code documentation would probably help a little bit, (a lot for the SDK), but not enough.

[dbwagner]

<rant>I have unsucessfully tried to play with netremote now for 2 weeks... </rant>

Here, here! That's how I feel, although I don't think it's quite as bad as that. I've successfully gotten Girder and Slink-e doing useful things, and my ccf editing skills are coming along. But!

I think that the online documentation has one glaring omission: how to create feedback buttons and frames. As I've said in my other posts, feedback is one of the killer features of NetRemote (the other is the use of IP instead of IR). Please, please, PLEASE just document this and I'll shut up! :lol:

[Ben S]

I've decided to go text only because I can actually get it done this way, and will crack away at documentation until it's all there, and then go back and look into taking screenshots to go along with it, formatting nicely, pdf, etc.

For now, documentation has been started in the Wiki (http://www.netremote.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Docs/DocumentationIndex), and current topics are CCFs, Plugins, Variables, and Special button types.

[Lister]

Now that's a good start. Thank you ben!

Now where are all the other netremote users and why haven't they added to it yet?

[Aaron]

I also understand it may be difficult without docs but there are MANY CCFs that you can learn from. I'd much rather see Ben spend his VALUABLE time finishing the app then trying to document. I have already agreed to help the docs one the app is finished and I can use it in my home on a regluar basis... right now, it is not usuable for me since there are many bugs with working on the SimPad.

Please let Ben finish the version...

[jhopkin]

I have also suffered through getting started with NetRemote. I think Lister is on to something - the user community should be chipping in to document. Maybe we should make this topic sticky so newbies have a place to post documentation requests (like sliders) and collect those into a to-do list someplace prominent. I'd be happy to document an area I've mastered - unfortunately that doesn't include sliders yet. :wink:

-James

[Lister]

It's not even learning the CCF's and GML's. It's finding out if my damn connection is even working?! No matter what I do, nothing happens. I have the right IP's set up, but I don't know if I forgot to enable something in the netremote driver. There needs to be a step by step guide to get going, because the one that we have a link to didn't help me one bit. I followed it and I still don't have any communication. I have some sweet girder commands already built, just waiting for netremote!!! Hook a brutha up!

[Ben S]

I'd be happy to document an area I've mastered - unfortunately that doesn't include sliders yet. :wink:

Okay. There is some information about sliders in the docs I put together. Does that seem to describe it well enough or is more detail required? Additionally, you can put requests here, but it might be more useful to put a page in the wiki for documentation requests.

What areas have you mastered, James? I'd love help!

[Ben S]

It's not even learning the CCF's and GML's. It's finding out if my damn connection is even working?! No matter what I do, nothing happens.

Okay, for starters - is this Girder only, or JRMC as well? Have you verified that your client (PPC or Win?) is on the network properly?

For Girder, is the Internet Event Server enabled in Girder? Have you made sure the IP address and ports are correct? Have you made sure the passwords match (case matters!)? Are the plugins "enabled"? (Hitting F9 in Girder enables/disables the plugins). When you press a button in NetRemote, does the little green light in Girder flash to yellow?