Page MenuHome
Create Task
Maniphest T53197

Reference Usage in manual lacks necessary Editor Type prerequisite information
Closed, ArchivedPublic
Actions

Description

System Information
Debian Linux

Blender Version
Broken: (example: 2.79

Short description of error
Reference Usage does not inform the user which of the 17 editor types they need to use the described capability

Exact steps for others to reproduce the error
This has been by far my hardest part of getting onboarded onto Blender. The manual is overall very good, and has very useful, explicit Reference Usage guides to show the user how to access the feature, but these Reference Usage examples don't include the prerequisite information required to use the feature- information on what corresponding Editor Type one needs to get to the menu item or item.

This has been an enormous struggle for me in learning Blender, as I'm never sure which top level view I need to use any given capability described in the menu. I believe I & many other newcomers and experienced users both would be assisted by the manual having information available for each tool or capability having the complete, needed information to enact it's Reference Usage.

It's definitely a trivial example, but it took me a couple minutes to find "Export", because I had switched off the "Info" editor pane & thus had no "File" menu. I believe this is just one very simple example of Reference Usage being incomplete.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/data_system/files/open.html#usage

Event Timeline

rektide (rektide) created this task.Oct 29 2017, 10:11 PM
Vuk Gardašević (lijenstina) edited projects, added Documentation; removed BF Blender.Oct 30 2017, 3:04 PM
Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) lowered the priority of this task from 90 to 50.Oct 30 2017, 5:30 PM
Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) added a subscriber: Aaron Carlisle (Blendify).

Thanks for reporting and I agree that it is an issue. Although like a couple issues in the manual there is an issue in the UI of Blender that causes errors like this. Luckily in Blender 2.8 at least this specific example will not be an issue as the "Global Topbar" feature gets added.

Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) changed the task status from Unknown Status to Unknown Status.Jul 31 2018, 8:04 PM
Aaron Carlisle (Blendify) claimed this task.

I am going to archive this as there is nothing we can fix unless you point out concrete examples of areas that need improvement. This will be something that we want to continue working on.