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We've just made some changes in the documentation and organised things better by consolidating all the main official information into one area. Now that it's all in one place it's starting to look a lot more complete and it's certainly becoming more passably comprehensive. In the spirit of developing this further I'd like to solicit opinions from everyone as to exactly what we should be adding next. We're really interested in hearing from people who recently started playing in particular - we've added a lot of more advanced information in the last few months (look in the 2.0 pages) but I wonder how people are getting on who are just starting out?

Just as a heads up to prime the discussion, I know there are several people who think we should produce a printed manual but we're really not likely to do this for one main reason - its really hard to keep those up to date - every version of EigenD is improved and re-making a printed manual is way too expensive for a company of our size every six months. And a manual that is wrong is worse than no manual in my opinion. So we've made a fairly big commitment to online documentation/manuals (look at the new Workbench section for an example of how we're developing this), and recently we added versioning to that so that it can be kept fully up to date. There's a place for printable PDF documentation in that though, so don't let my aversion to a giant book put you off suggesting some.

So, what would be your next best document or section to see?

John

In many circumstances it's perhaps easiest to have good examples. The two setups that come with the current package are already rather educative, please go on along this line! Some really simple ones that are all about showing the possibilities of a specific agent and other more complex setups that show what can be done by combining various agents. Exploring can provide a deeper, better memorizable experience than just reading and trying to keep all aspects in the head before doing the first step.

Together with my older feature wish that you can add comments to individual agent instances (and not only types) a set of "explained" examples that cover a wide variety of use cases (where ideally every existing agent is used in a usual and somewhere else not-so-usual context) would fulfill my optimal vision of a tutorial. (If you add descriptions to agent types perhaps also first try to complete the online help, so jumping back and forth between Workbench and the Wiki for looking up agent descriptions is reduced)
As a first step: e.g. a setup with a strummer (the perhaps most undocumented agent?) that uses keys to "strum" could be really helpful.

The times change, move the wills (rough translations of Luís de Camões)

I really don't have nothing against paper printed manuals, but truly they don't make sense in this present times (referring mostly about ever expanding EigenD)

We cannot detach a computer (laptop, macmini, whatever ) from our instruments so...the wiki is "our" best resource of documentation. (ideas on making this info offline?? and syncable??)

I also appreciate all the effort in completing all the agents description, and the "connection" there is between wiki/ stage and now workbench (where we can have a brief info)

Adding more tutorials to workbench is absolutely invaluable, like as example setups, or mini setups.
Starting the live seminars with G+ would be awesome as well (recording them and transcribing also, for later reference)

the Strummer is not yet a supported Agent

I hope that you haven't had any crashes involved with the Drummer, this should be a lot more robust in the face of unsuitable file formats - if you have had problems could you please let us know?

@cogreslab

Quoted from this thread:

" So, let's get on with it, and start a proper manual for Pico. The current community is far too small compared with the potential of the instrument. Here are some ground rules suggested: 1. no technical terms unrelated to music. Or if these are really necessary, a glossary for lay readers. 2. A troubleshooting section listing all possible things that could go wrong. For example, the Windows version of EigenBrowser bears no relation to the screenshots shown in the tutorials. 3. Why doesnt Pico 2 work? On my instrument I can only seem to use Pico 1, and this does not operate the cello or the clarinet. 4. How to link Stage controls to sliders other than the knobs which are difficult to adjust on PCs. The list is long but these are a few starters."


The suggestion for a glossary of terms is an excellent one and we'll try and put one of those together in the next few weeks. We've coined quite a few terms over the last year or so as we've got 2.0 and Workbench ready and it would be good to see specific definitions of exactly what is meant by them all assembled in one place. Could anyone comment on terms or word usage that they found confusing?

A troubleshooting section is something that would be a very good community contribution if you have the time to get it started. There would be no better people to start it off than those who have had the very troubles they write about. Here would be a great place for it - it's writable by anyone and if you put some stuff in there I'll change the main title to make it obvious to everyone that it's not just tips, tricks and howto's anymore.

Regarding how to change your knobs to sliders, this is already described in the Stage documentation here. If you read the section about editing, you will see that you can simply click on a widget with the edit tool and change it to a slider in the selection box. It is worth reading the documentation - there is now a lot of information in there. We have been working steadily on it for the last 12 months and it is becoming passably comprehensive as a reference. It needs work, but it's steadily getting that.

The lack of congruence between the video tutorial screen shots and the look and feel of some of the windows is not satisfactory, I agree. I have posted on this subject before, and it's a matter of cost more than anything else. The video tutorials are very expensive to produce. Since we are right in the middle of making a dramatic set of changes to the whole system (with 2.0) that will certainly lead to substantial changes in the way the instruments are learned we have been holding off of remaking these. I am also becoming fairly convinced that, with the advent of Workbench, the main Factory Setups will probably not be the future way in which a lot of people use and play the Eigenharps. They are quite 'all singing all dancing' and have a lot of features and functions built in, functions that many people never use. We have been finding here that since it has become so easy to make setups we have been making much lighter, smaller and specific setups, and lots of them. This has substantial advantages in speed of loading (I am using a tiny, quite playable setup right now that loads in less than 3 seconds) and in memory usage. Given the high degree of flux that this is in right now, spending tens of thousands of pounds producing new, slightly more current video tutorials that will be out of date inside three months is probably a bit stupid. It seems a much better thing to wait a few months while we all figure out what it really means to be able to build a specific playing setup from scratch in less than five minutes.

I'm interested to hear from any early 2.0 users about their views on this as well..

John

We've just made some changes in the documentation and organised things better by consolidating all the main official information into one area. Now that it's all in one place it's starting to look a lot more complete and it's certainly becoming more passably comprehensive. In the spirit of developing this further I'd like to solicit opinions from everyone as to exactly what we should be adding next. We're really interested in hearing from people who recently started playing in particular - we've added a lot of more advanced information in the last few months (look in the 2.0 pages) but I wonder how people are getting on who are just starting out?

Just as a heads up to prime the discussion, I know there are several people who think we should produce a printed manual but we're really not likely to do this for one main reason - its really hard to keep those up to date - every version of EigenD is improved and re-making a printed manual is way too expensive for a company of our size every six months. And a manual that is wrong is worse than no manual in my opinion. So we've made a fairly big commitment to online documentation/manuals (look at the new Workbench section for an example of how we're developing this), and recently we added versioning to that so that it can be kept fully up to date. There's a place for printable PDF documentation in that though, so don't let my aversion to a giant book put you off suggesting some.

So, what would be your next best document or section to see?

John

We're planning to build and ship direct functionally identical (or very near to) equivalents of the existing Factory setups in 2.0, so please don't worry that these are going to evaporate in the near future. They're nice setups and we spent a lot of time developing them in the year before launch. A lot of people have got comfortable playing them. My point is really that we are already experiencing some changes in the way we're using EigenD due to the ease of building setups and I think this may well have an impact on the optimal learning process in the future. I can see an awful lot more 'standard setups' starting to kick around in the near future - I'm already mulling over several. We may well add some new Factory setups soon.

@Roger - The cost of producing tutorial videos sadly has little to do with equipment. We already own high quality camera, lighting and editing equipment. It's the time and the people. That kind of tutorial style thing takes a very long time to get right (it took me, Nick and Richard probably 4 complete record/edit cycles each three days long for each of those you see now, and that was after we wrote the scripts which took an age as well). They are just expensive to make unless you're prepared to put up with something seriously inferior, either that or one doesn't count the time it takes, not an option for me I'm afraid as I have to pay people so that they can eat. We will get to making new ones, but I don't want to spend that money until I'm confident we'll get at least a couple of years of mileage out of them.

@Randy - the suggestion to work on documenting 1.4 rather than 2.0 is probably not a particularly good use of peoples time. We won't be formally supporting 1.4 after 2.0 enters stable and I do think that the cool new stuff coming in 2.0 will make it very compelling for players moving forward. We at Eigenlabs certainly won't be spending any time at all documenting 1.4 from now on, all our work will be going into 2.0. We've already starting spending quite a bit of time on this, witness the new Workbench reference and tutorials. This isn't to stop anyone doing so, but I do feel that such effort will end up being somewhat wasted in the future, which would be a great shame.

I'm right with you on the 'play music and not diddle about' thing by the way. I'm so with you on that that I didn't bother with the 'diddle about' bit at all when we launched and was roundly punished by a large number of irate customers as a result. We've just spent two hard years making it possible to tinker with setups easily (in response to overwhelming customer feedback) and I am very much looking forward to getting back to the stuff that makes playing them more fun now that we've nailed that one down. Or, more correctly, 'nearly nailed that one down'.

John

BTW, a lot of words are getting written in these forums about the lack of this or that documentation. I hate to say this, but if we all spent that time actually writing some stuff, that might be a bit more useful. There are only four of us doing software over here (and some of those part time, this is not a big company) and we spent quite a bit of time putting the Wiki in our website because everyone said 'we want to write stuff and help out with the documentation' then absolutely nobody did. Still haven't, over a year later! Wouldn't take much, if everyone did a little, to improve the Eigenharp documentation to the point that it's the best instrument documentation in the world. I've had a look around, the competition is not fierce.

@Roger - The cost of producing tutorial videos sadly has little to do with equipment. We already own high quality camera, lighting and editing equipment. It's the time and the people. That kind of tutorial style thing takes a very long time to get right (it took me, Nick and Richard probably 4 complete record/edit cycles each three days long for each of those you see now, and that was after we wrote the scripts which took an age as well). They are just expensive to make unless you're prepared to put up with something seriously inferior, either that or one doesn't count the time it takes, not an option for me I'm afraid as I have to pay people so that they can eat. We will get to making new ones, but I don't want to .

BTW, a lot of words are getting written in these forums about the lack of this or that documentation. I hate to say this, but if we all spent that time actually writing some stuff, that might be a bit more useful. There are only four of us doing software over here (and some of those part time, this is not a big company) and we spent quite a bit of time putting the Wiki in our website because everyone said 'we want to write stuff and help out with the documentation' then absolutely nobody did. Still haven't, over a year later! Wouldn't take much, if everyone did a little, to improve the Eigenharp documentation to the point that it's the best instrument documentation in the world. I've had a look around, the competition is not fierce.


there is scope for making ENG type videos on the fly. I did one today just using my Samsung S 2 to illustrate the difficulties I am confronting in trying to get the cello to play. It took me half an hour. I can now upload it to YouTube so that you can see the problem, accepting that it's too large to email. But it could be put into drop box. Then someone with a camcorder or smart phone could just as easily film the correct procedure. By way of reply. It then becomes a generic answer to the question, and bet im not the only one having trouble making cello and clarinet work with Windows 7 . No one is expecting art here! Just information.

Here's my first attempt in setting down the procedure for getting pico to play cello.

The cello set up button is fourth up from the bottom, on the right.
First depress the main mode key then the cello button then let go the main mode key this turns the cello key light green. That should be you need to do, I.e. the same procedure as for piano (also called sampler three) , except that for the piano you press the third key down on the right, not the fourth key up.

Sadly, that procedure doesn't work. Or at least there is no sound coming out when you try to play, nor from the slider.
Let's try another approach then. With alchemy you press the fourth button on the left after depressing the main mode key, then the fourth on the right, so let's try pressing the fourth down on the left with main mode key depressed, then the cello button (fourth up on the right)
Nope, that doesn't give any sound either. So maybe the volume is turned right down? Trouble is, where's the cello volume key? nothing seems to change the volume that I have yet discovered. So let's revisit the eigenharp pico video tutorial. To be continued.