Re: Programming beginners' documentation

["steve donovan" <steve.j.donovan@...>]

Well, here is my first stab at an installer:

http://mysite.mweb.co.za/residents/sdonovan/lua/lua-msi.zip

(It is a zipped .msi, no 'tarballs' here ;))

It puts LuaBinaries together with the manual, plus a shortcut to PiL.
As suggested by Philippe, it registers .lua as a filetype associated
with lua5.1.exe.  PATH and PATHEXT are modified, so this works:

C:\stuff>type test.lua
print ("hello, number of args is",#arg)

C:\stuff>test 1 2 3
hello, number of args is  3

We still need a Friendly Executive Summary kind of tutorial introduction,
and some illustrative scripts.

steve d.

PS. Three shortcuts on the desktop! Man, that feels a bit much. But
this is what people say they need.

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@gmx.net> wrote:
> On 10/05/2008 21:38, KHMan wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, I think a lower barrier may be needed. [...]  Even the
> installer
> >
> > might have certain informational pages to ease the user into the
> > first steps. Also, sample scripts, etc. Stuff like that.
> >
> > Of course, all of this needs resources and effort to support and
> > produce. But if it is to be targeted to beginners, we need to
> > mentally put ourselves in the position of a real beginner and see
> > what we can do to lower the barriers. Sort of a product usability
> > study.
> >
>
>  It is funny that a somehow unfriendly message (coming out of frustration
> and lack of knowledge/proper reading) generated a (new) reflection
> (thinking) on how to make Lua more friendly for beginners (at least on
> Windows, where the need is probably the most pressing).
>
>  I hope something useful will come out of this.
>
>
>
>  --
>  Philippe Lhoste
>  --  (near) Paris -- France
>  --  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
>  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
>
>