I will make two counter arguments. But I don’t know if they outweigh the potential benefits:
Keeping the docs as close to pure markdown as possible really helps keep them future proof. Any html or js we add won’t work if we convert them to jekyl or readthedocs, or pdf. We already have made this compromise a couple of times (scaling the images, the firmware and calculator pages). But we need to make sure we consider that side cost.
The docs last a lot longer than forum posts. The forum posts have half lives of maybe 3-6mo, in my mind. So bringing in anything older than that risks people saying things like, “Same problem here” on a post from 2 years ago after finding a post from the docs. Maybe the fact that these are live (or nearly live) updates will make that a non issue.
Can you explain the thought process someone would take to make these useful? I’m not trying to be critical, I just hope to see their benefits the same way you do. Someone is on the docs, and they see these badges and then what?
Cheers Jeff, appreciate the feedback and questions.
Understand and agree. Been writing script that runtime injects visual cues/links to related forum content. So, the markdown Doc content doesn’t need to be edited/modified, just need to include a script block (or script file reference) at very top of the markdown.
I’ll create a (rough) demo to help better communicate usage scenario/value…
Considered using one of the many many Markdown’sh flowchart diagram generators like PlantUml or Mermaid ?
Have used mermaid in the past to quickly embed sequence/activity/other diagrams within markdown docs. Spent many hours faffing with Visio over the years, until these libraries turned up.
I’m not sure a flow chart is that useful at communicating to people who aren’t used to them. Mermaid is awesome though.
But drawing it out, and then finding a way to describe it would be useful, for a couple of critical, common problems.
Just having a list of common problems and how to solve them for a particular symptom would be great. I remember @robertbu making a big post about Z slipping issues. We should find that and convert it to the docs, if you want troubleshooting there.
Making progress. I waited for some things to come together that have not yet so I am moving forward and will continue to tweak the sites as we go.
Currently the new “shop” theme is up, https://shop.v1engineering.com/ I have a few more fixes and pages to move and that page will be the new “home” page and I will not use the wordpress site anymore (it still serves some doc’s pictures so it is not going away yet).
I have also made a few format changes to the docs and well as added a dark theme option at the top. I hope it will automatically select the correct color scheme depending on your browser preference. https://docs.v1engineering.com/
Oh and I looked at all the bundling options for the shop and the current version is going to be the one I stick with. I have made a couple updates but have more to go (mostly involving the LR3).
The easiest thing is to let them break, search and replace with whatever the new domain is. I can leave it a IP address or change it to a subdomain but that will take a while (days to propagate fully I suspect).
some sort of offline site tool should pull all external images, right? Then maybe I can mash it together with a new pull request. Any other ideas?
3)Maybe I download them all from the old site (going to be lots of extras), add them to github, in the same file structure they are in now, then search and replace the url to the current location?
I still get so much resistance on forums when they get told my Cnc is 3d printed. All the usual
Crap.
Here’s the kicker- I only ever tell them about it after they’ve complimented the work. No complaints about it, compliments about the QoW, but as soon as they hear ‘3D printed’…
Going back and forth with a dude on Reddit who is spouting that all belt driven CNCs are toys, and that PLA and printed geometry can’t hold up to the stresses involved.
I thought about ‘Home Shop CNC’, but Even that conjures up the idea that it isn’t suitable for ‘production’.
Yeah. That definitely was the prevailing ideology for a long time. If you remember the CNC builds before Ryan, there were a lot of enormous machines. That kind of stuff is neat, but when those big machines make a mistake, they just demolish the bit, or worse, they bend a huge piece of steel. The MPCNC has proven that you don’t need everything to be steel. It will take a long time for that to propogate through the “tribal knowledge” and you are doing your part.
You have to cut them some slack though. A lot of them spent a ton of money on huge machines that are very capable. They just didn’t know there was an easier way. At this point, going back on that idea is going to make them regret some expensive decisions.
Oh yeah that used to be how all comments started. At some point I started to believe it, so I can assume how others would as well. All of those thoughts went away for me that day I started doing those speed tests from the video. I have not doubted the capabilities of my machines since then…now I have kinda been hell-bent of proving otherwise without being a punk about it. Just coming from this video, Lowrider3 vs aluminum 3 - YouTube on a LR you can’t help but laugh at ignorant statements.
So I bought a domain name, it is taking forever to clear escrow and transfer over. It says it is due today at my registrar, fingers crossed. I am very excited for it, still not sure how I will transition to it or how fast I will do that. Maybe I should start saving all fun announcements and updates for RMMRF?
Yeah, sunk cost is definitely a factor. Local YouTube woodworker dude was asking what machine I run, because he’s been having issues with his shapeoko, and liked the look of stuff coming off my Lr3.
His next video update had several disparaging comments about ‘printed’ CNCs that were just flat out directly from our interaction.
“If you want consistent, high quality results from a machine that is ready to go out the box, you need to make a significant investment”
Says the dude who 3 days before was telling me all about his broken shapeoko, lol
