[Bsod-mentors] Summer of Documentation - Proposal

[Eugene Reilly]

Tim, thanks for sending the txt version.  Personally, I don't think this 
proposal focuses on documenting Blender as it is geared more toward external 
render engines (BMRT, Renderman, and Gelato). 
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Richard DuPertuis <richard at 3dpertuis.com>
To: bsod-mentors at blender.org
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 07:55:53 -0700
Subject: [Bsod-mentors] Summer of Documentation - Proposal


I am your Blender. A born writer, I can take everyone else's submissions 
and blend them into a single, consistent voice.

My expertise is writing, not your program. This would work out well for 
you, because I am the user you wish to target with your documentation.

I was brought to Blender by my longtime love of rendering, specifically 
with BMRT. When that was lost after the Pixar lawsuit, I kept limping along
with the same BMRT version I knew would never be updated again. This 
month I discovered that my favorite renderer had been reincarnated as 
Gelato,
a free download, and I learned that it had been written in Python. 
Blender users began posting on the Gelato forum plugins for linking up the
functions of both applications. I rushed out to eBay and nailed the 
prerequisite video card needed to join the Gelato club. And I saw at 
once that
Blender would be the best possible program for producing work with this 
new renderer.

Last night I took a long look at Blender for the first time. I found it 
to be different, alien even. All my years of experience with Maya, 
form*Z, Rhino,
Max and Mirai could not help me through Blender's interface. After a 
glance, however, at the Quick Reference PDF I was able to understand why
things were laid out in the way they were. The document that that you 
wish to produce this summer will be an extension of this, and it will be 
written
for people like me. It must be written well enough to lead the new user 
to comprehension of this strange new 3D suite called Blender.

I can do that kind of writing, even as I climb the learning curve. I've 
done it before.

A few years back my pursuit of the Renderman spec led me to a young 
Ukrainian named Alexei Puzikov. He had written a program to work with 
shaders
called slcEditor. To faciliate my learning of this app I offered to 
write a users document for it in proper English. The result is attached. 
It is a small piece
of work but it, along with the language you are experiencing in this 
proposal, will give you an idea of how much I can contribute to your 
project.

Not quite what you had envisioned for team member, eh? Not an 
experienced Blender user, but a talented writer who has found an 
incentive to learn
all this program's intricacies as fast as possible. I can do this by 
editing together the written works of those who do know Blender, know it 
very well. The
steps I take to learn from developing the documentation will be the 
followed again and again by those who take the time to read the manual 
that comes with
all versions of Blender from now on.

Please consider me for inclusion on your team.

Richard DuPertuis
a retiree who can put a lot more than a week's worth of hours into the 
production month.
USA
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