Safeworld as an alternative to this list

[Mary Bernard <Mary_Bernard>]

Speaking as one who spends more time answering NB list questions than 
asking them (though I well remember the days when the reverse was true), 
I've got real doubts about the value of a chat site as a way of learning 
much about NB in general and XPL in particular.

When I answer a question, I usually open NB, and spend a bit of time 
hunting through the menus, or through my keyboard table, or through Help, 
to check that the info I give is accurate; and quite often I test my advice 
on a temp file. That all takes time, sometimes quite a bit of time, and I 
don't want to spend that kind of time online, for the financial reasons I 
outlined the other day.

Also, I find the chat format peculiarly irritating - sending, and then 
having to wait and wait and wait for a reply. I'm a v. impatient person, 
and twiddling my thumbs is my idea of how to have a bad time.

Also, Louis has done a beautiful job of breaking possible NB topics into 
categories - Lingua, Styles, etc. But I'm not sure whether such subdivision 
is in the long term to everyone's benefit. I, who don't use Styles, might 
never click on that category. But we all know how threads drift. I might 
miss something useful - or might miss being able to contribute something 
useful. The good thing about receiving list email is that I can glance at 
the header and also at the message in the preview pane. If the header says 
Styles, but the message has drifted to being about keyboard files (not 
impossible!), then I'll read it. Tucked away in a subheading of the 
Safeworld world, I might never see it.

Finally, as to XPL. I've said I'll give a class (!) in it, and I shall, but 
an hour on a chat line isn't going to get us very far, unless people have 
done a bit of boning up in advance. XPL is in the end something you learn 
on your own, by reading the manual (the CPG) and trying out the examples. 
It has rules, and a vocabulary: not for nothing is it called a programming 
*language*. It's rewarding, even at the simplest level;  it's lots of fun 
to learn, esp. if you like structured thinking and puzzle solving; and it's 
incredibly useful. But it really does take application.

I don't think I'm just being Luddite about the chat format. The value of 
the list, it seems to me, is that the format gives time for considered 
responses, which are surely what people want?

Mary

Mary Bernard
mary_bernard