Further to
our discussions on the last conference, below is the list of modifications that
some STEM help pages might need.
First of
all, I would like to thank the STEM experts for their great work. While I found
STEM help pages very helpful in addition to the www.eclipse.org/stem/ pages as well, I
have a little suggestion.
I believe
everyone already knows that in software world some problems can last for unnecessarily
long time to solve. As an example, when I started to learn STEM, I troubled
with very slow running scenarios. After reading many pages from here and there,
I started to try big solutions, such as, increasing the allocated memory to run
STEM. However, when I contacted the stem-dev community, I get the answer from Jamie (many thanks to him!) by saying simply I needed to uncheck the pause feature from the preferences
menu, then, I said, Ohhhhh, if I just knew this before wasting all that time.
But wait,
that does not mean I am a lazy guy, on the contrary, I enjoy hardworking and
learning. Nevertheless, the problem is unnecessarily wasting time, which is the
scarcest resource in almost every project, don’t you think?!
Now my
suggestion is, if our respectable STEM experts can spare half an hour every
couple of days to set back, and run whatever screenshots capture software they
have, and then start showing us how to do things. Ranging from downloading
STEM, creating and running scenarios, check code, write and upload code using eGit,
etc, etc, etc.
That is it!
This half an hour video will for sure worth numerous pages of help
documentations. Thus, I believe, if STEM experts could make a list of such
videos, it will become much easier and faster for many people to get onboard and
start participating effectively in using and developing STEM project.
I hope this
suggestion will get your attention. Thank you.
=======================================================
Now,
comments I have on STEM help pages are as follows:
·
The text size needs to be
adjustable to suit all people, especially people who use reading glasses as I
do. Windows OS has features to do this by using either the magnifier tool or
changing the screen resolution, however, many disadvantages exist.
·
STEM user Help >
Interface > Perspectives > Analysis
o
The new version 2.0.1 (that I am using now) has 8
taps instead of five tabs.
o
The new taps are: Error
log, Time series, and Phase space.
o
Although these views and
perspectives are customizable, for new users this can be confusing.
·
STEM user Help >
Interface > Views > …..
o
I could not find some of the
explained views when I tried to access them through: Window > Others … > …..
o
These views are: Disease
View, Report View, CSV Logger
·
STEM user Help >
Interface > Wizards > New Disease
o
The list of the disease
models has been changed. For example, the suggested model “Deterministic SI
Disease Model Impl” does not exist in the new version software. Thus, the
screen shot is different from one might see.
·
STEM user Help >
Interface > Wizards > New Automatic Experiment
o
Some text seem to be cut
out from the end of the page
Suggestions
and comments from the community are very welcomed. Have a great weekend.