[Bf-docboard] Proposal for restructuring the user manual

[Gaia]

Here is a modified version for the navigation proposal with your
proposed changes:

     http://blog.machinimatrix.org/blender/manual/

While doing this navigation update i realized that the Blender manual
somehow "knows" that it is running within an iframe and it obviously
hides the Manual navigation sidebar by default. So this was not my
idea, it just "happened" :)

Now... what about taking this as a chance to create multiple
navigation trees for different purposes, like for example:

- Riggers tree
- Animators tree
- Modellers tree
- New Users tree
- Maya Users tree
- Reference tree (what we have right now)

Then others (third parties) could even use this method to create their own
special purpose manuals by reusing the blender "document nodes" and
create their own document trees (and add their own document nodes
as needed).

Maybe the documentation writers would need to pocket the idea of
writing "relational document nodes" instead of "hierarchical documents"
(whatever that implies).

And as you can see the navigation tree on our blog is not even hosted by
Blender.org but it just reuses the documentation "nodes".

cheers
Gaia


On 03.01.2015 09:54, Campbell Barton wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 12:50 AM, Greg Zaal <gregzzmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We have two currently supported renderers (game engine is it's own thing
>> imo, and not technically a renderer in the same context):
>>
>> Cycles
>> Blender Render
>>
>> Freestyle is not a renderer, rather a post-effect as I understand it (it
>> works on top of either BI or Cycles renders).
>>
>> Currently we have `Materials`, `Textures`, `Lighting` and `World` as their
>> own sections - which made sense when BI was the only supported renderer.
>> However now that Cycles is around, It'd make more sense to me to move the
>> materials, textures, lighting and world sections into the folder for each
>> renderer. So the structure would be:
>>
>> Rendering
>>
>> Blender Render
>>
>> Materials
>> Textures
>> Lighting
>> World
>>
>> Cycles
>>
>> Materials
>> Lighting
>> World
>> [no need for a textures folder for Cycles]
>>
>> One problem with that is that textures can be used for brushes and particles
>> too - should we then add `Textures` folders under those categories as well?
>> Or instead keep it as it is currently with `Textures` in the root, and cover
>> all the applications (BI/Brushes/Particles...) there?
>>
>> Alternatively, since Cycles is technically an external renderer, should we
>> remove all Cycles docs from this manual, and instead have them documented
>> elsewhere separately?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Greg
> This is an awkward case, especially since Blender-Internal isnt having
> much development and we may make Cycles default soon.
>
> Suggest have 'Render -> Blender Internal', 'Render -> Cycles'
> sections, as suggested.
>
> Brush docs can just link to `Render -> Blender Internal -> Textures`
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