Manual

[Wolthera]

So, the Q&A thread on reddit now has 40 comments for one variety or the
other. I want to address some of them.

1. The primary reason we have a q&a site is that we cannot keep up anymore
with the onslaught of daily questions. In particular boud has been getting
downright unpleasant, and this is because there's literally a dozen places
people try to ask questions. (Irc, forums, twitter, tumblr, email, reddit,
forum threads, steam, facebook, mastodon, bugzilla). If there's only one
place we'd have to check for people having issues, that would lead to far
more time to answer people pleasantly.

2. The manual is a good manual compared to 99% of all open source manuals
out there. The reference part is fully up to date. I am responsible for 80%
of it. People usually only update the sections they are personally involved
with. Even when we used mediawiki we rarely had updates coming from
outside, so it is not the technology.

This means I am solely responsible for updating stuff like the animation
page. Because people either do not care about animation enough to update
it, or they are too busy, or in one case, someone did write a thing, the
Japanese animation template page, and people have been critcizing this
guy's industry workflow as "overcomplicated trash".

Similarly, to avoid rehashing, I tend to delay working on pages like
resources, brush engines, shortcuts, text, and the old brushtip tutorials,
because I know they're going to be overhauled. This is particularly an
issue with the brush settings, whose interface seems to constantly change.
I try to be open to these kind of changes myself, but the fact remains that
brushes are a massive part of krita, and thus those parts of the manual
will keep lagging behind.

This is neither an excuse nor a request for appreciation(I will in fact
scream if someone replies to this saying they appreciate my hard work),
this is me pointing out how we got to this point. This is also me pointing
out that it is quite silly that I am responsible for all of that.

This is significant as well because I have been writing my thesis this
summer. An experience so harrowing I was in tears daily near the end of it.
I anticipated it would be harsh, hence me spending so much time on getting
the manual ported to sphinx, because I would not be able to have worked on
it in summer. I failed it too. I failed it partially because of my writing.

I have been in a funk since then, with some productivity during the sprint.
So, for me, who is 90% responsible for the manual that reddit thread is not
so much an inspiration to do better as one to question the point of my
existence. To clarify, it is not a matter of thin skin, so much as that I
am not sure if I can at all write anything. Perhaps all of you are just
seeing trybfszhkkkvdsz and humouring me!

And maybe I wouldn't have felt that way had I only been 30% responsible.
Maybe it wouldn't even have been a problem then. Or maybe it would have,
apparently to get feedback on the manual beyond 'it's good' requires
pissing people off on reddit. (Perhaps we should use this as a tactic to
get feedback on our release candidates, just keep telling people on reddit
there's no bugs in it till they get angry and report some. (This is a joke,
pissing off people intentionally is horrible.))

My other point is that I will be unable to update the manual for now. I am
also unable to figure out how to update scripty(kde translation collection
bot), despite having read books on bash. I just can't seem to comprehend
the code or the way it should be used. This might also be because of
mentioned real life issues.

Btw1: This is sort of a cyclic thing, I needed to throw a tantrum to get
people to work on the first iteration of the manual with me instead of all
writing their own incomplete ones. I also needed to throw one when
everything needed to be ported to Mediawiki. Perhaps I am being too soft? I
don't like rushing people. :/ Anyway, I am beyond burned out now, halp.

Btw2: The manual is good. It is not flawless. Criticisms of outdated and
confusing sections are legitimate, but the reference section has a sentence
for almost all options(the text brushtip is missing, still). For people who
remember the manual when I started improving it (10 pages written and
everything marked with TODO), it is more than they dared to dream, have a
bit of empathy for these poor souls.

Btw3: yes, I do have access to professional help, don't worry.
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