Decisions

• We're not documenting all effects or all analyze menu items on a page-of their own. Only the most complex ones that require a screenshot will get that treatment. We don't have the time to do them all.
• Most effects and most analyze menu items will appear on the relevant page about that menu.
• The reference section should avoid tutorial exposition. It's kept brief, and links to tutorial sections as needed. (Should be viewed intelligently, so as to avoid shunting users around too much, and avoiding creation of half-page "tutorials" for the sake of it which is a significant reason for our duplication problem).

Questions

• JamesCrook 07:39, 13 June 2008 (PDT): For non logged in users the wiki is hard to use because there is no navigation panel (with a link to HomePage and AllPages). Isn't that something we should change?
  • Gale 13June08 20:59 UTC: Hmm, I suspect the nav panel was disabled precisely because its contents are only appropriate for editors and we may not be able to show different nav panels according to whether you are logged in or not. The logo is of course a link to the home page. Maybe we could add an <a title> to it, or a second nav panel with links to all pages and home page (even if the editors have to see it as well)? I'll speak to Buanzo.

Wget

One way to produce a local copy of the Audacity Manual is to use wget to 'rip' the pages. Andre Pinto (a GSoC 2009 student) has produced a much better script solution which fetches the correct pages and does some reformatting. We're using this to create local zips of the manual.

Sub-projects

Here are some specific ToDo projects...

• Keyboard Shortcut Reference looks a major task, inserting all the current shortcuts, categorizing and explaining them, and making it look decent. Done. At least, all the commands and descriptions are there. Still to decide on categorizing, if explanations are appropriate, and if it looks decent. - Bill
• Timeline needs a simple one sentence explanation that there is also a vertical ruler in a most track views and what it does.
• Index?? Let's get the talk page for it and discuss what we want. - Peter 26Feb08: ready for review, including suggested keywords - please examine the talk page and edit/remove/add suggestions
• Images needed: Toolbars needs an image of docking with a blue triangle. (Steve: image added, but may want cropping? - Gale: it is too large but leave as is for now, image resizing syntax should handle it but needs to be got working... ) Existing image cropped and uploaded as 'Docking-a-toolbar-cropped' and added to page - Bill
• Edit Toolbar - James plans to upload backgroundless images. Done - Bill
• Image updates: Pencil image on Tools Toolbar needs white background.(Done)
• Audio CDs needs a peer review. Andy wrote out a first draft and moved two pages from the old wiki here. Reviewed - made some minor changes - Peter 18Nov09
• Effect Menu needs futher work - it is incomplete Most effects now documented - still a few to do. Need to decide which effects need their own page and which don't, as well as appropriateness of the descriptions. - Bill
• Glossary needs serious attention Done, mostly. I need help with two definitions. - John
• How to get help page needs serious attention Done, mostly. A couple of questions remain. - Bill
• Recovery page needs writing

Some details

• Old text on Mixer Toolbar probably needs more reworking.
• Import / Export Preferences needs text for "Show Metadata Editor" in the event this box is changed to affect non-chain exports. Otherwise, move it from here to Interface Preferences
• All other Preferences images need updating as the tab order has changed. Bill W - all prefs tabs images updated. New prefs pages created for new tab order. Still some options with no description or inadequate description. Preferences overview page updated.

Low Priority

• Technical info: nice to have... cepstrum (on plot spectrum), what an FFT is, why dB use logs, 'why you get clicks' when you remove sound.

The html manual distributed with Audacity is primarily the reference section. Tutorials and so on are nice to have with it, but are not essential. These sub-projects are therefore of lower priority.

• Tutorial - Your First Recording has screenshots of many types of connectors. Some text to explain what the differences are and how they are used would be nice, possibly a new page. There is some text already on the main Audacity wiki about this - we want to avoid duplicated effort, so we need to decide whether such text lives there or here.
• There are tutorials linked to from the Old Pages page, which are in an old style. They're not linked to from the Main Page. We need to decide which of these are already sufficiently covered by Dominic's new tutorials, and which need updating.
• Post 1.4.0, generate screenshots of all effects and their parameters automatically, and probably have separate Manual pages for each.

Not Needed (yet)

• • Add Screen Capture Feature. Not needed or relevant for 1.4 release builds
  • Add Theme Preferences. Not needed or relevant for 1.4
  • Add SmartRecord Preferences. Not needed or relevant for 1.4
  • Transcription toolbar full version.
  • Help on Scripting.
• Hyperlink targets for Preference Pages help. Link not implemented on preference pages

Lifted from Main Wiki

Text from the documentation checklist on the main wiki about this manual has been moved here. It makes far more sense to capture the overview of all changes required to the manual in one place, i.e. on this page. The documentation checklist page on the main wiki now points to here for work to do on the manual wiki.

This lifted section is old and could do with some drastic pruning.

Essential Changes to Manual Quick Guide

• Write Unsupported File Format Help for Quick Guide (mention wav, midi, etc).
• Changes To Preferences Bill W - Done. I've gone through the Quick Help pages and updated the text that references the various prefs tabs, and linked that text to the new pages.

• • Add Batch Preferences. A lot of this functionality has moved to menu items, and so needs to be described there.
• Update AudioIO Preferences.
• Changes To Track Features
  • Help on Label Track (substantially changed feature). JC: Done? See Label_Tracks page in Wiki - Not quite done - see the edit hints on the page - GA

• Using Vertical Zooming.
• Explanation of multi clip, including joining of tracks.
• Changes To Toolbars
  • Add Transcription Tool Bar (cut down version)
  • Add Time-Selection Control. Include use of mouse wheel.

Essential Changes to other Manual pages

• Your First Recording Done - Bill

Latency correction

• what it is and where it is set
• meaning of behind-zero arrows
• why the all-recorded-audio-gone-behind zero dialogue appears
• correct procedure to adjust with Time Shift Tool
• explanation of what happens with latency correction when append-recording.

Bill: I've done the Latency Test page, which covers a lot of this. Do we want another page for Latency Correction? Or perhaps a page on Latency that links to Latency Correction and Latency Test?

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• Tracks and Clips I've had a go at this, merging the 'old' text. - Bill

Selection area issues when dragging

• If you click inside a selection area when dragging, the selection area will move with the clip. Otherwise, the selection area will stay where it is.
• To drag a clip containing a selection area into another track, either click in the track with Selection Tool to remove the selection, or click outside the selection area when dragging.

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• Edit Menu

Several entries on this page require attention