I didn’t want to hijack another thread (again). So here’s my new thread on discoverability in Xojo. Wrote up a blog post on it. http://www.bkeeneybriefs.com/2017/04/discoverability-in-xojo/
Feel free to discuss.
I agree with your whole post there Bob, I think the problem is that it could easily eat up a few months work for one person. Community driven content might be a way to go but Xojo might be reluctant though as they would be handing over part of their baby.
Xojo moderated access to the docs might be a way to go, I mean some people already spend hours responding to forums and putting in bug reports, why not farm out some more work to the masses 
It depends if all that is generated from some other internal source and pushed out to the various endpoints (web, in built docs etc) at which point amending the final output is a waste of time and Xojo might not want to give open access to their CMS that runs it all.
As they say, “Search is King”. If you cant find the information, there’s little point it being there, no matter how much you have. IMHO binary examples are a pain, being unable to text search the folder structure for a call you need a sample on is plain daft.
It sure is a tricky one, I look forward to reading the discussion on this.
Bob, your points on discoverability are spot-on.
Unfortunately, I am not sure if there is a complete answer, although you have provided some good suggestions.
Despite my nearly sixteen years of constant usage I find myself struggling, at times, to find things in the Xojo documentation. Dont get me wrong, I can usually guess at the right location but I think discoverability in Xojo is lacking. I think this hurts all developers, not just those new to Xojo.There are many times in my 12+ years of programming when I need to go back through my own material that has been written years ago to remember something that I previously coded, and juuussttt can’t quite remember the correct code sequence or logic. 
I still get frequent emails asking how to do something in Excel, the Canvas, or OpenGL that I hadn’t though of or wasn’t included in a book. Once the solution is created then an updated version is uploaded. There are so many possibilities that I am not sure of the way to further help fellow users. I think the wiki is a step in the right direction, but there are only so many hours in the day.
I am all for increasing the number of examples, reference information, and xojo wiki - but (gotta love that word) if the big boys on the block (Windows, Mac, and Linux) have not figured out how to do it, then it may be difficult to figure out how to make this work with the many available operating systems.
Another great article Bob - keep 'em comin!
This issue is so common. I own a full set of MBS plugins with a lapsed subscription largely because finding a solution to my problem is just too hard.
As for a wiki I think this forum is the Xojo wiki, we collectively are it, and frequently the same subject comes up again and finding the old one(s) aren’t that easy either.
I’m not offering any solutions here except that perhaps we all need training on how to effectively search the resources - perhaps a good subject for @Paul Lefebvre to attack?
We did offer to make full extracts of the wiki available years ago https://forum.xojo.com/conversation/post/9930
In the 4 years since we have had 0 requests
The wiki does/did have external editors http://documentation.xojo.com/index.php/Special:ListUsers
We’ve locked down edits now so we can move content to the new documentation site without it changing underneath us
I liked the wiki format for its interlinking and that adding editors was easy (although we did have to occasionally patrol edits)
Its templating system is enormously flexible which makes generating documentation that has a consistent look & feel was mostly painless (although there’s no wysiwyg editors for it which is a pain)
BUT it can also be a pain in the ■■■■ in other ways
Getting a PDF of the documentation out of the wiki was basically impossible despite several add ons that claimed to make this possible. In order to use them we found we’d need dedicated servers and a ton more infrastructure to generate a PDF than the wiki itself took. And a service contract etc which was a lot more than we expected or bargained for to generate a PDF.
Organizing a “book”, chapter by chapter, in the wiki is really counter to “wiki” philosophy and when we did have the user guide in it it was not a great experience.
The current doc site can generate a PDF decently and handles the user guides etc better but, like everything in life, there are trade offs.
[quote=325568:@Eugene Dakin]Bob, your points on discoverability are spot-on.
Unfortunately, I am not sure if there is a complete answer, although you have provided some good suggestions.
Despite my nearly sixteen years of constant usage I find myself struggling, at times, to find things in the Xojo documentation. Dont get me wrong, I can usually guess at the right location but I think discoverability in Xojo is lacking. I think this hurts all developers, not just those new to Xojo.There are many times in my 12+ years of Xojo programming when I need to go back through my own material that has been written years ago to remember something that I previously coded, and juuussttt can’t quite remember the correct code sequence or logic. I still get frequent emails asking how to do something in Excel, the Canvas, or OpenGL that I hadn’t though of or wasn’t included in a book. Once the solution is created then an updated version is uploaded. There are so many possibilities that I am not sure of the way to further help fellow users. I think the wiki is a step in the right direction, but there are only so many hours in the day.
I am all for increasing the number of examples, reference information, and xojo wiki - but (gotta love that word) if the big boys on the block (Windows, Mac, and Linux) have not figured out how to do it, then it may be difficult to figure out how to make this work with the many available operating systems.
Another great article Bob - keep 'em comin![/quote]
Edit: Added 12+ years of Xojo programming. I have been programming for a total of about 35 years.
@Normal Palardy: why do you want to generate a PDF out of a Wiki?
[quote=325571:@Norman Palardy]We did offer to make full extracts of the wiki available years ago https://forum.xojo.com/conversation/post/9930
In the 4 years since we have had 0 requests[/quote]
Yet Dash is based on the Wiki, right ?
You will never satisfy everybody.
+1 to this
Is there a case for just embedding a Google search box onto the screen?
It’s easy to do, it’s free, it’s more powerful than the built in search and it can /normally does restrict results to the site you point it at…
In short, you made it easier for yourself but harder for the users.
The pdf is, like the new documentation, two steps down from the wiki (personally I find them unusable).
And like Beatrix I doubt the pdf is necessary.
There is a reason so many of us are using Dash.
I personally like what the php people did - let users write comments and let other users up- or downvote those. See http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-change-key-case.php for example. Lots of helpful comments, concrete examples and everything. As Xojo users are famous for their willingness to help this could work pretty well for us as well.
I would love to see Paul or Norman, (Bob?) or someone at Xojo to a complete Xojo training course at Lynda.com - they have a lot of stuff for FileMaker and other development environments. I’ve been a Lynda subscriber for years…
A PDF of the LR and other documentation was, and continued to be, an incredibly common request until we started shipping one with the IDE again
This is exactly why I mentioned that we DID have a means for people to contribute to the wiki but very few did
In addition to the title of this thread “Discoverability in Xojo” , a good habit is building your own “best practices book” on the fly, to keep everything you have worked so hard for.
That’s a great idea. What form of a book do you find useful?
I’ve added a lot of xojo-howto-notebooks to my Evernote. Very handy, available everywhere and on every device. And, it also contains all pdf-books which got indexed by Evernote.
I had to learn php for a small project I was working. I agree 100% - the user contributed code snippets and tips were the best. I wish Xojo had more code samples and tips. As a new user it was a HUGE help. Letting users contribute to this would be positive and would increase the document base many-fold very quickly at no cost to Xojo than the initial technology investment (not sure what that entails).
One thing I do not saw here or in briefs i the new documentation site @ http://developer.xojo.com/
As example, go to http://developer.xojo.com/xojo, at the bottoms page:
Click "Yes" if this page was helpful. Click "No" to suggest improvements.and you have two buttons to express yourself
Yes and No.
Writing a Feedback case against the documentation: OK, but Yes / No as above is good too.
And Paul is pretty reactive there (always reactive, usually very fast).
Example of lack of information (where the programmer have to search the information elsewhere):
http://documentation.xojo.com/index.php/ListBox.DoubleClick
[b]ListBox.DoubleClick[/b]
The user has double-clicked on the ListBox.
Edit: and the sentence above is a bit misleading; the DoubleClick event is not fired when you Double Click on the Listboxs Heading (!)
This will not give an answer to Joe Newbie on how to use this Event.
Another question: what the user is awaiting when (s)he double-click in a Listbox (Row, Cell, Heading ?)