jacque wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2018 6:45 pm
The problem will more likely be that the material is sometimes obsolete. One example that comes to mind is the handler for stripping out empty lines from a script. It was written before the filter command was altered to include "filter without empty", which accomplishes the same thing in a single line of code.
What you say is absolutely correct, but here is the (in my mind) much larger problem. The older documentation still works (probably better than 98% in new versions) because as you pointed out, Lc is pretty good at maintaining backwards compatibility.
I know that the exercise is hard to do for someone that has been using something for a long time, but try to put yourself in a "user who is touching Lc for the first time position". I am going to avoid touching on other sore spots, like the backdrop fiasco, and concentrate on just documentation.
Let us even say you are a conscientious user, who is trying to figure out how to do 'task x'. For this example, 'task x' is filtering an empty line of text. Do you think it is easier, not knowing the language, to find *any* information on doing this in Lc as it stands now, or in the older versions?
I can only speak for myself, but I didn't even know about 'filter' until I read about it on these forums (unrelated thread).
If I were looking to find out about it from the documentation in Lc 9, I *could* slog through a 375 page pdf or try to track it down in the dictionary by following bread crumb trails, or come to the forums and post a question, or try to figure out which of the lessons might point at it on the website (if I knew about that option, I didn't find that till later in my usage of Lc).
If I'm in RR 2, I can open 'documentation', select 'categories', go to 'text and data', and be presented with a breakdown / summary of each listed item. Hm. If there is a word I don't understand, I can follow that up by hitting the word in a lot of cases, or looking it up in the glossary. Now, if I were still lost at that point, I could follow the options above by going to the forum, etc.
As far as the addition to filter goes, I think it is great that it was added to that. I also would think that as you became more comfortable with the environment, you would eventually get to that one line. Myself, I don't mind writing a few more lines to get something done, I just want to find out how to do it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think resurrecting this stuff is the 'ideal ' way to learn, I think the far more 'ideal' way would be to have it resurrected
AND updated
AND included in the current IDE.
(watch how many yowls that one produces).
I don't see it happening, and since that is the case, AND we already have this available, AND no one has to re-write it, this is the next best alternative (resurrection).
New users who rely on old documentation run the risk of not really learning the language as it currently exists. There have been a lot of additions as well that old documentation won't cover. We've come a long way since version 2.
I don't see this as as being the
end of someone learning, just as a good solid foundation for the beginning and a decent reference to look back at. Once someone has gotten familiar enough with Lc, they should be able to have some idea of what they are looking to do and can go through the more difficult documentation if they want.
Side question - How old are the scripting conferences? I think they are still valid as documentation. I'm sure you do. I'm sure a few others do as well. Does age alone define somethings usefulness? If that is the case, I'm obsolete as well, bogs 2.0 works much better
Real shocker - I think the tips in 2 were fantastic as well and should be brought back
Honestly, I didn't ever think having another resource for learning/teaching was considered a bad thing. Maybe I'm wrong.
I found a copy that looked too good to be true, unfortunately, Heather confirmed it was too good to be true. Would have been the best $30. I spent in a long time if it were legit 
