[texworks] Beginners' needs (was: Lua scripting)

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 18 juin 09 à 00:18, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard a écrit :

> I don't agree. This is related to texworks because you have to  
> select the
> typesetting mode (pdftex, pdflatex, xelatex, etc) and most users  
> won't worry
> about this before they actually have to select it.
>
> And, as a general rule, I don't think help documents should be  
> available before
> install xor after install, but both before and after.

More important than this, and related to what David Perry said in his  
messages, is the careful choice of default settings, so that the user  
may start to use the software at once without even knowing that there  
are choices to be made (and without having to read any help documents  
beforehand).

Then the user might later (or never) want to know more, explore the  
prefs and dig through the help or manual (my preferred choice) to see  
what the various pref settings mean.

I don't remember exactly the source or wording, but I read recently  
some discussion of GUI on the web, saying in essence that a user must  
never ever be asked to pick up a setting (for example at installation  
or first launch) before she has had the opportunity to use the  
software and then experiment with the effects of the various available  
choices for this setting, to see first hand what the setting actually  
implies.

Bruno Voisin