An external comment on the English language PL manual

[OldRadioGuy]

Most of us English-only speakers who use PhotoLine still struggle with the lack of clarity in the English-language documentation that's available. Personally, I think this may be a factor in the failure of potential customers to adopt PL as their photo editor of choice.

That view was reinforced when I ran across a white paper written and made available online in another forum by professional photographer Dale Burton. http://www.bluedonkeyphotography.com/A_ ... rt_Two.pdf He was writing about his analysis of out-of-camera processing software prompted by dissatisfaction with pricing policies of the market leaders. One of the alternatives Dale mentioned was PhotoLine. Here's part of what he wrote, certainly not praise:

"Photoline 32 -

"Teutonic Photoshop. I need to say something here about documentation....

"...I have enormous respect for someone who is a not a native speaker of English writing any instructions whatsoever in English. That person speaks, writes and reads at least one more language than I do, with enough competence that I can get at least some of it, so hats off to the author’s intellectual capability, especially if the author is also the software developer. Astounding smarts, is all I can say.

"That said, I could not locate a comprehensive manual for this program and the FAQ and feature summaries were not terribly clear to me, so I was at the mercy of third-party commentaries for guidance. This program appears very competent, but some of its power is shrouded in ways I can’t just guess at. My trial version expired long before I could find out for sure. There are only so many hours in a day."

There's the bottom line. Most potential English-language users don't have the time to get past the lackluster English documentation to learn PhotoLine. That's a shame, because there are a lot of potential customers out there now looking for a replacement for Photoshop.

Bob

[greenmorpher]

I second that. Plus we need more tutorials and in particular, video tutorials.

Cheers, geoff

[Stefan_E]

What's wrong with the English manual? Propose you find a chapter which is hard to understand, open it side by side with the German manual ... are the sentences grammatically incorrect? Are there individual words just plain wrong? Hmm... what do you then conclude?

Stefan

[bkh]

"That said, I could not locate a comprehensive manual for this program and the FAQ and feature summaries were not terribly clear to me, so I was at the mercy of third-party commentaries for guidance. This program appears very competent, but some of its power is shrouded in ways I can’t just guess at. My trial version expired long before I could find out for sure. There are only so many hours in a day."

There's the bottom line. Most potential English-language users don't have the time to get past the lackluster English documentation to learn PhotoLine. That's a shame, because there are a lot of potential customers out there now looking for a replacement for Photoshop.

Frankly, I think that you are misquoting Dale Burton. My reading is that for some reason, he didn't manage to find the online manual and/or the manual download link in the manuals section. Strange. Otoh, he claims that he doesn't mind reading manuals (which have an inherent tendency to be a bit terse), so the manual format shouldn't have put him off. While the English in the manual isn't always perfect, imo it's sufficiently understandable.

Apart from that, I entirely agree that PL would benefit from well-written English language tutorials.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Stefan wrote:

[q]What's wrong with the English manual? Propose you find a chapter which is hard to understand, open it side by side with the German manual...[/q]

Bob was making the point concerning /monolingual/ Anglophones, Stefan. They don't understand German (or anything else that isn't English).

Brukhardt wrote:

[q]Frankly, I think that you are misquoting Dale Burton. My reading is that for some reason, he didn't manage to find the online manual and/or the manual download link in the manuals section. Strange. Otoh, he claims that he doesn't mind reading manuals (which have an inherent tendency to be a bit terse), so the manual format shouldn't have put him off. While the English in the manual isn't always perfect, imo it's sufficiently understandable.[/q]

You might be right, Burkhardt. Or not. Consider -- the PhotoLine manual is 300 pages, but Pagemaker had a 500 page manual, Canvas has a 900 page manual. I don't have other manuals around any longer, but I remember FreeHand had a pretty comprehensive manual, probably in the 500 page category, but even with that, Olav Kvern was able to find a market for his Real World FreeHand book which for v.8 ran to 864 pages (I remember that because it was such a /tour de force/ -- and he DTPed the book in Freehand itself which was an extremely comprehensive application but not the best DTP program).

Here's a very simple problem in translation which doesn’t come from the manual but illustrates the situation.

I'm listed in this forum as a "Power User" -- as you are. I'm not a power user of PhotoLine. Check the questions I ask and you'll agree with me -- I'm a actually a low level and limited user whose main virtue is that I've stuck around for four versions since v.13) and I've stopped losing my temper over the inadequacies of the manual, the oddities of the interface, and the inadequacy of the Hubers' responses to me on this forum when I've been stuck on some point and can’t advance. I have very largely stopped trying to become a power user -- I've just given up -- because of these factors. I know what a power user is -- I am a power user of NisusWriter Pro and of Canvas (I was a beta tester of Canvas); I used to be a power user of AppleWorks, Pagemaker, and Cricket Draw (also a beta tester of that way back in the day, but I know I am a quite low level user of PhotoLine despite my efforts to advance -- which have been thwarted by the manual and the interface (which has improved, but still has a way to go.

YOU, Burkhardt, are correctly labelled as a power user it seems to me, so is Bob who is listed as "Mitglied" which translates (according to Babel Fish backed up by my daughter who has been learning German at university level in support of her career path in opera singing) to "Member" -- and there is the illustration of the German > English translation problem. Since this is a descriptor of a person on the forum, "Power user" should rank above "Member". I suspect that "Mitglied" actually refers to someone who is considered by the Hubers to be closer to them and to PhotoLine -- an /associate/ in some way, not a Beta tester (although I wonder why you wouldn't be in that category, Burkhardt) because that is a separate category including the likes of Hoogo.

You see what I mean?

Incidentally, three of the problems with the manual are not German > English translation but rather conceptual. They are:

1) Too often, explanations do not start from the first step and move through to the outcome. Instead, they start from some intermediate level. They assume a starting point which is actually some way through the process or they miss vital steps in the process or some interaction between different parts of the interface. For example, after all these years, I recently finally found (through this forum) the answer to the default antialiasing. It so happens it is by using an icon which is in the General toolbar -- which I did not have switched on! No wonder I could never find it! I had read about it in the manual -- it is on page 297 for god's sake! (just 7 pages before the start of the index) and this is a basic setting! -- but the assumption is that I know where to find the icon. here is the entry:

7.10.2 Antialias (icon shown here)
This icon allows to to turn antialiasing fast on and off. Antialiasing means, that the edges of text and vector graphics are drawn unsharp by creating intermediate colors. Normally this looks nicer. If you want to use images in the web, this is often not desired. In this case the files should be as small as possible, but this is possibly prevented by antialiasing, because it increases the number of colors used.

It should say:

7.10.2 Antialias (icon shown here)
View > Toolbars > General
This icon allows to to turn antialiasing on and off and to set default antialiasing...

Do you see what I mean? The entry in the manual assumes I know where to start. Since I don't, I can't use the information which isn't well presented anyway. And just reading it right here, does this antialiasing apply only to vectors?

2) The lack of illustration. This is a graphics program, for goodness sake. We don't want words we want graphics showing us what to do! The manual should be packed with graphics showing every step of the way.

Good grief -- you got me going again!

Cheers, geoff

[Twindaddy]

Um ... the power user vs. member comparison does not lead anywhere. I assume it's a feature of the board software which labels the members according to their post count.

Cheers,
Markus

[greenmorpher]

Um ... the power user vs. member comparison does not lead anywhere. I assume it's a feature of the board software which labels the members according to their post count.

Hiya Markus

Your post is beside the point, but I will respond.

Well, it does lead somewhere. For a start, "Miglied" is German, not English, while the other two terms are English. An English term should be used. We don't even know whether it really translates at Member within this context, even though that might be a (not necessarily "the") correct translation in other contexts, perhaps generally. Both German (I assume) and English (certainly) have other words that that mean the same thing in a greater or lesser degree, but with some nuance added. We ought to see that.

You "assume" it is derived from the post count. If so, it ought to be dealt with. Those with a high post count might be better labelled "slow learner" or "troll".

The important thing, though, is that I wasn't saying this was definitive; I was simply giving it as an illustration of things not being quite right in English. Detail stuff, but so easy to get right. The definitive stuff is there and you aren’t responding to that in any way.

in fact, I said "thatree of the problems" then listed only two.

3) Is structure. A good manual is accessible from two directions -- from that of the task oriented user, and from that of the serial thinker working through the menus.Lots of good manuals are much longer than they might otherwise be because they present in both ways: they might take you through editing a photograph, for example, and adding/subtracting elements or carrying out certain manipulations; alternatively, they also work through the menus from start to finish, a serial activity.

We need a manual that works both ways and is copiously illustrated throughout.

Cheers, geoff

[Hoogo]

...and I've stopped losing my temper over the inadequacies of the manual, the oddities of the interface, and the inadequacy...

Those were the days, my friend...

"Power user" is surely just a topic of the board-software. I guess it's not meant to be English, it's merely because a lot English words are mixed into the german language these days, especially when the topic is something about computers. Computer is called "Computer" in german most of the time, the German word "Rechner" meaning "calculator" is rarely seen. "Troll" is the same word in both languages, so I would really like to see that

[Twindaddy]

I didn't mean to offend you by not elaborating on the other issues. It was just the first thing thing that crossed my mind that the given example is a problem of the translation of the board software.

Regarding the other issues I think your view, that these problems are not related to the translation of the manual, is rather correct. I'm software developer myself (ok, I was) and I tend to believe, that my concepts, designs and code weren't too shabby, but my documentation always was Developers shouldn't write manuals but in small companies they usually have to (though I don't know who writes the PL manuals).

I recently thought about recording some video tutorials in english since my new computer finally arrived (yeehaaaw ) but as you might have noticed, I'm no native speaker with a lot of quirks like grammatical idiosyncrasies and very imaginative use of tenses. My pronunciation probably isn't better than my writing so I doubt, it would help to promote PL to an english audience.

Cheers,
Markus

[Hoogo]

What if someone translates SCX Tutorials and leaves it to some native speaker to correct them? Someone should ask SCX for permission.

[Juan]

What if someone translates SCX Tutorials and leaves it to some native speaker to correct them? Someone should ask SCX for permission.

Now youtube support subtitles, I wouldn´t mind if the tutorials are in german with english subs.

Cheers
Juan

[bkh]

Geoff, you are definitely right about the forum (and forums in general, for that matter) – I agree that it is totally ridiculous to rate forum members by the number of posts. In the PL forum, you are a Power User when you have at least 200 posts, so this means "power user of the forum, not of PL"
Probably beta-tester is a category created manually (and probably no longer updated), and I don't quite see what it should mean to an ordinary forum member anyway ("take care, this guy might be referring to an unofficial version"?). "Mitglied" is "Member" (of a club, society, etc.), but of course if you switch the Forum software to English, it should become "Member". But when it comes to the Forum, I'd probably start elsewhere – for example, I'd put the current "PhotoLine International" section first, adding the "Users' questions", "Suggestions for Improvement" and "Tips and Tricks" categories, making it clear that PL welcomes international customers.

Incidentally, three of the problems with the manual are not German > English translation but rather conceptual.

That's just what I wanted to say – imo, the translation isn't the main problem – but while I can spot enough mistakes in the manual, it's hard for me to judge how much a native speaker might mind. Writing a manual by going through menu entries and toolbars isn't a very good way of writing a manual – a concept and task oriented approach would be much better but is also much more difficult to do.

There are a few more points which might need attention, and which might be easier to fix.

1) different terminology for similar or seemingly similar concepts, for example: selection – mask – lasso , mask – layer mask – clipping layer, alpha channel – transparency – opacity – intensity

2) the index of the manual is poor (e.g., there is no entry "Antialiasing", and the only reference is the "Antialias" button while it should also refer to the Attributes panel)

3) a glossary is missing (the explanation about antialiasing and small palettes should probably to there)

And just reading it right here, does this antialiasing apply only to vectors?

No, it also applies to bitmap layers when their pixels aren't aligned with the pixels of the background layer. In fact, the manual entry should also state that the button only affects layers whose antialias setting is "Default" and which aren't contained in a group whose setting isn't "default".

Cheers

Burkhard.

[OldRadioGuy]

"That said, I could not locate a comprehensive manual for this program and the FAQ and feature summaries were not terribly clear to me, so I was at the mercy of third-party commentaries for guidance. This program appears very competent, but some of its power is shrouded in ways I can’t just guess at. My trial version expired long before I could find out for sure. There are only so many hours in a day."

There's the bottom line. Most potential English-language users don't have the time to get past the lackluster English documentation to learn PhotoLine. That's a shame, because there are a lot of potential customers out there now looking for a replacement for Photoshop.

Frankly, I think that you are misquoting Dale Burton.

Burkhard,

In another paragraph, Dale wrote:

"...I have enormous respect for someone who is a not a native speaker of English writing any instructions whatsoever in English. That person speaks, writes and reads at least one more language than I do, with enough competence that I can get at least some of it, so hats off to the author’s intellectual capability, especially if the author is also the software developer. Astounding smarts, is all I can say."

I infer from that he did review the manual. However, I certainly understand why you may have reached a different conclusion because Dale was unclear when stating his conclusions about PhotoLine.

But here's an intelligent professional who has taken the time to examine alternatives to his current process for producing digital photographic images for his clients. His research was thorough enough to find PhotoLine as a possible choice to use. No matter what the specifics of his reason for rejecting PhotoLine, it was lack of English language support (good manual/tutorials/more active English-language forum/?) that caused him to reject PhotoLine.

Bob

[OldRadioGuy]

Stefan wrote:

[q]What's wrong with the English manual? Propose you find a chapter which is hard to understand, open it side by side with the German manual...[/q]

Bob was making the point concerning /monolingual/ Anglophones, Stefan. They don't understand German (or anything else that isn't English).

And sometimes we don't even understand English, Geoff.

Bob

[Stefan_E]

[q]What's wrong with the English manual? Propose you find a chapter which is hard to understand, open it side by side with the German manual...[/q]

Bob was making the point concerning /monolingual/ Anglophones, Stefan. They don't understand German (or anything else that isn't English).

I was not proposing you to read the German version - just look at the layout. In a micro-tutorial of German: Sentences end - as in English - with dots, exclamation marks, question marks. How many sentences do you count? Never mind, you got the point:

Incidentally, three of the problems with the manual are not German > English translation but rather conceptual.

Where did Dale come from?

Teutonic ...

- quite right. Never try to understand a German user interfaces. Forget it. I could make an endless list here ... PL is middle of the road for that matter. Now, from that starting point, how many pages do you need to explain this?

Exceptions proof the rule - so does Hoogo's menu structure (given the constraints). Which incidentally is the cause why I don't upgrade anymore: It's not worth the effort to every time fiddle with the menu configuration myself.

Stefan