Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

eRalm,

I appreciated your "faqs" on the XL-7,which I had downloaded prior to
joining this group.

1.I also agree with the majority of what your proposing here (though I have
personally always found E-mu's manuals to be among the most thorough,best
layed-out, and informative),I would add that getting a "quick answer" to
anything is knowing what to ask."newbies" are particularly frustrated,by not
knowing "what" a thingy or process is called,which is compounded by many
manufacturers using the same or like names, for completely different
things.(e.g.ones "pattern" is anothers "group" and yet anothers "bank").

2.A cookbook being a "how-to",not a re-write of the existing manual as you
know,(but some others seem to think is required),have you considered a video
tutorial?(broken down into easily assimilated chunks by topic of course),and
baring in mind the attention span of the average muso.

3.Downloadable PDF. "updates" are the hot tip,though it wrongly assumes
that everyone is, can, or will be "online".And is, can, or will be willing
or need to actually read it.

4.Default "guru's" become such via the recognition of/for their "labor of
love".Renumeration? Hmmm...

5.Hope your girl-friend doesn't check your "sent" folder.

Happy Birthday,

best,
g.

    From: erik_magrini@...
Reply-To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [xl7] Manual
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 06:56:19 -0600

Honestly, I don't think that Emu needs to include section on hwo to write
music, there's tons of articles on that online if you're looking for it.
The stuff I had in mind, is consolidating the sections of the manual.  Say
preset editing, it's actually in a couple different spots, when it really
should all be one.  They should break it up into the following chapters:

1. Intro/Connections
2. General/Global options
3. Pattern Sequencing
4. Song Sequencing
5. Presets
6. Midi
7. Controllers
8. Misc

Each chapter should have two parts, first a beginners section describing
what all basics are, and maybe giving a few real life examples.  The
second section would be an indepth explaination of each menu option,
focusing more on experienced users and circumstances.  Nothing against
people just starting out, but once you start knowing this stuff, it sucks
wading through pages and pages of manual on "what is synthesis", when you
only want to find a quick answer to a preset menu question.

rEalm






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I appreciated your "faqs" on the XL-7,which I had downloaded prior to 
joining this group.

>>>Great, glad to hear it! <<<

1.I have personally always found E-mu's manuals to be among the most 
thorough, best layed-out, and informative), 

>>>I agree to an extent.  The manual isn't bad per se, just over redundant 
in many places which makes it confusing to navigate.  Call me sick, but 
I've always thought Akai had some really good manuals (thinking of my 
S3000XL in particular), although most peopel complain that they're very 
hard to get a grip on for a "newbie". <<<<

knowing "what" a thingy or process is called,which is compounded by many 
manufacturers using the same or like names, for completely different 
things.(e.g.ones "pattern" is anothers "group" and yet anothers "bank").

>>>Preset, patch, etc, I hear ya!  <<<

2.A cookbook being a "how-to",not a re-write of the existing manual as you 
know,(but some others seem to think is required),have you considered a 
video tutorial?(broken down into easily assimilated chunks by topic of 
course),and
baring in mind the attention span of the average muso.

>>>Thye video idea is way out of my league, I'd most likely be doing this 
at my day job during my spare time.  Yeah, good point on the how to, but 
what I'm really trying to avoid is doing a "how to make music on the 
Command Stations" type of thing.  Everyone's got a different way of doing 
it, and I'm not sure my way is the right way!  I think if I DO decide to 
do this, it would be more of explaining the functionality of the XL-7 in 
more layman's terms, similiar to the FAQ.  I'm also contemplating 
including a floppy or CDrom with preset and pattern examples for users to 
load into their machines, similiar to Yamaha's Silver Book for the CS 
series.  Again not entirely sure I'm going to go ahead with this, as it 
will take a lot of my time (I'm swamped with studio work right now too) 
and the final cost may not be worth it enough to make it attractive to the 
end user.  We'll see, you guys will be the first to know what's going on. 
<<<

3.Downloadable PDF. "updates" are the hot tip,though it wrongly assumes 
that everyone is, can, or will be "online".And is, can, or will be willing 
or need to actually read it.

>>>I'd really like to do a PDF, but like I said before that would mean 
there's nothing to stop someone from buying it and just emailing it or 
posting it for everyone to read.  While I'm not doing this solely for the 
money, I would like a little back for my efforts. <<<

5.Hope your girl-friend doesn't check your "sent" folder.

>>>Nah, work account! <<<

Happy Birthday,

>>>Merci! <<<

rEalm

10 point Comic Sans MS.  I see you're point though.  I thought that 
Acrobat files had fixed fonts inbedded in the file?  I haven't sued 
Acrobat to cerate stuff in awhile.  If I decide to do a free manual, it'll 
most likely be HTML for greater compatability.

rEalm





Another drawback to PDFs (as opposed to HTML) is that the end user can't
easily modify it for use on her machine.  F'rinstance:  From this end, 
your
messages always look like you choose six point type, and that would be a
pain in online documentation. (I suspect you choose a font which I don't
have.) With HTML, that would be an easy fix.  With Acrobat, an unfortunate
font mapping would be harder to modify.
---
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>>>>I'd really like to do a PDF, but like I said before that would mean
>>>>there's nothing to stop someone from buying it and just emailing it or
>>>>posting it for everyone to read.  While I'm not doing this solely for
>>>>the money, I would like a little back for my efforts. <<<


Another drawback to PDFs (as opposed to HTML) is that the end user can't
easily modify it for use on her machine.  F'rinstance:  From this end, your
messages always look like you choose six point type, and that would be a
pain in online documentation. (I suspect you choose a font which I don't
have.) With HTML, that would be an easy fix.  With Acrobat, an unfortunate
font mapping would be harder to modify.
---
* Radio Free Entropy:  http://just-john.com/cn/rfe.shtml *

>10 point Comic Sans MS.


Ah.  Well, I ain't got that -- being a 17-year Apple user, I try to be as
"Sans Microsoft" as I can.  I have VirtualPC w/Win2k on it, but I don't use
it for email.

>I thought that Acrobat files had fixed fonts inbedded in the file?

I've run into you-don't-have-these-fonts messages when opening PDF files.


>I haven't sued Acrobat to cerate stuff in awhile.

I wouldn't actually go so far as to sue them.  (I know, no fair making fun
of your spelling when you haven't had your morning coffee.)
---
* Radio Free Entropy:  http://just-john.com/cn/rfe.shtml *