Writers of manuals documenting computer programs are painfully aware that most of their intended audience of users hate to read documentation; users want and expect their programs to be written with such an intuitive user interface that its use will be entirely transparent, so the existence of more than bare bones documentation is often considered an admission that the program is somehow deficient. But as Albert Einstein is supposed to have said:
The reality that any software deals with has a certain irreducible complexity, and this limits how simple designers and coders can make a program. The documentor must be prepared to deal with explaining this minimal complexity in as clear a way as possible.
As designer, programmer, and documentor of 3D-Filmstrip, I cannot blame the designer for handing me a bad design to code, nor the programmer for creating a complex user interface for me to explain. All I can do is assure you that I have worked hard in designing and coding the program to make it as intuitive and easy to use as I know how, and hope you will sympathize that since I am attempting to deal with a complex reality (visualizing the Platonic Realm of Mathematics) the program I have come up with cannot be entirely trivial, and it does require a modicum of explanation. But, since I know you will prefer using 3D-Filmstrip to reading about it, I have tried to organize the documentation in a way that will permit you to read only what you really need to. In particular, I have divided the documentation into several levels:
Level I, The
Basics
This gives an overview of the program, and will tell you the minimum
you need to know to get started using it. If you are so averse to
reading documentation that even Part I makes you gag, then please at
least read Once
Over Lightly. It is a condensed version of
Level I, and should only take you a few minutes to read. If you are
an experienced Macintosh user and will only be using the program
casually, this may be all the documentation you will ever need, but
to get the most out to the program, I strongly advise that you
sometime return and read the remainder of Level I, or at least
Getting
Started with 3D-Filmstrip.
Level II, The
Details
This is what normally goes into a standard
user manual for a computer program. In particular it has a
description of all the program menus, and gives a more careful
description of the programs major features and the organization of
the mathematical material that the program deals with. (Eventually it
will also give a full description of each of the pre-programmed
mathematical objects that 3D-Filmstrip knows about, explaining what
makes that object of special interest.) If you are interested in
what's "under the hood" or need to know more about some particular
aspect of the program, here is where to look.
Level III, The Gruesome
Technicalities
This is a repository for all the geeky, nerdy
stuff that I felt I should make available to those who really want to
know, but, unless you are masochistic (or want to try your hand at
writing MathViz software yourself) you probably will not be
interested in this level of detail.
Finally, there are a few appendices, giving acknowledgements for the massive amout of help I have had in developing 3D-Filmstrip, a discussion of copyright related matters, and an essay I have written called What Is Mathematical Visualization.
And of course, there is an all important Index to the documentation.