Help making CHDK and the forum better

[Psychokitty]

Now I have it almost complete, 80Kb. Just need some help to describe better the following features:

- DNG Format (for the coming soon new trunk)
- RAW buffer cached (new feature added together with the obove described)
- Remote Parameters (and its sub-menu)

Maybe is a good Idea to divide this CHDK User Manual in parts, like:RAW.txt, Zebra.txt, OSD.txt.... in order to have smallest books more readable.

I have to say that I didn't create any of the text, just I copied and pasted from the wiki and the forum, and mostly from http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK/End-Users-Guide-AllBest50, credit to Graystar.

This is what I have already done.

Fantastic job, lrossel. I love Graystar's work, but this can go into my camera for quick reference.

[velis]

Well, I'm a newbie. And I was looking for specific information. And, of course, I didn't find it

So here's a few n00b suggestions:
1. Wiki isn't really feature organized. It took me 5 minutes to find CHDK feature list (got delayed on other, just as interesting pages ). And when I found it, the features didn't have hyperlinks to pages with more detailed explanation.
2. Features are not well explained. Sometimes the author assumes I know what he is talking about. Some links to wikipedia or other sites explaining the more technical terms would be welcome.
3. I especially missed information on hardware limitations (impossible to do features)
4. It would be nice if there was some info on planned new ports (e.g. digic 4 cameras)

Otherwise, this SW rocks ! 

[Hacki]

1. Wiki isn't really feature organized. It took me 5 minutes to find CHDK feature list (got delayed on other, just as interesting pages Wink ). And when I found it, the features didn't have hyperlinks to pages with more detailed explanation.

True. I guess the three handbooks are the closest to what you were looking for:
CHDK firmware usage - CHDK Wiki
CHDK firmware usage/AllBest - CHDK Wiki
CHDK/MoreBest - CHDK Wiki

(Three for different versions of chdk, where the last one is the newest one)

2. Features are not well explained. Sometimes the author assumes I know what he is talking about. Some links to wikipedia or other sites explaining the more technical terms would be welcome.

Well. Maybe it is assumed that people who are interested enough in firmware hacks for cameras know fairly enough about technological terms as well as photographic terms.. (At least i'd think so, and if someone doesnt know a term, he/she can look into wikipedia/google themselves, adding direct links would just be a little more convenient)

3. I especially missed information on hardware limitations (impossible to do features)

Not sure what you mean by that. Most features which people can image but cant be implemented are requested regularly and are regularly denied, just have a look at the feature request section of this board. (for example higher resolution video modes)

4. It would be nice if there was some info on planned new ports (e.g. digic 4 cameras)

Ports are not planned. CHDK is a loose open source community, there are no dedicated "porters". If someone with ASM skills happens to buy a non-supported canon camera and finds out about CHDK, theres a chance chdk will get ported to said camera, otherwise, the chances are slim.

All in all, you got a point about the messy wiki. But it's a wiki, and if you dont like it, make it better. Take your time to get chdk to know, and improve said points. The community and millions (maybe exaggerated) of other n00bs would thank you. 

Regards

[fe50]

Hello, welcome velis !

1. Wiki isn't really feature organized. It took me 5 minutes to find CHDK feature list (got delayed on other, just as interesting pages ). And when I found it, the features didn't have hyperlinks to pages with more detailed explanation.
2. Features are not well explained. Sometimes the author assumes I know what he is talking about. Some links to wikipedia or other sites explaining the more technical terms would be welcome.

Well, most developers don't like writing documentations...and not to forget: the language barrier...

But - it's a wiki - you (and also everybody who use CHDK on his camera) should help to make the documentation better, more complete and maybe also better structured !
Also 'n00bs' can start with small corrections an additions, e.g. correcting typos or add internal links.
There's a discussion page for each wikia article, so missing or incomprehensible informations can be discussed there.

3. I especially missed information on hardware limitations (impossible to do features)

Not so easy, each camera has different hardware / software limits, some limits also depends on the current settings (e.g. Av / Tv / scene mode, MF enabled/disabled). A pivot chart with all cameras and features / limitations would be nice, but it's extremely difficult, there must be also fixed test conditions etc.
BTW - you found Camera Features already ?

4. It would be nice if there was some info on planned new ports (e.g. digic 4 cameras)

Hehe - you need a crystal ball for this !
A new port is a very difficult, extremly time expensive process, developers with ARM assembler & C programming skills + enough free time for such a project are rare...
But there's hope: The new camera generation (also the new Digic IV cameras) can be ported...
You'll find more informations on the camera articles in the wikia, just search for the model name 

[velis]

Thanks for the replies guys.

To clarify:
In point 3 i was referring to lack of info about problems with video resolutions (as that was the info I was looking for)
Now I found a thread that explains the problems involved:
Higher 320x240 FPS?
Well, from what I learned from this thread I now know that I need to buy SX-1 instead of SX-10 as they are completely different cameras even though on first sight it looks like they are (almost) the same.

However what I was referring to was that there is no single article on the wiki for us noobs that would explain why video resolutions can't be scaled. However, judging from the info in the article, my current camera (S2 IS) would still be theoretically capable of filming 2048 x 480 @ 30FPS, provided that the DIGIC II is fast enough to encode that and the card can take the badwidth. That would still provide a lot more detail than 640 x 480 @ 30 FPS

As for point 4:
I understand the amount of time involved, but I do not understand the process. So if I were to try a port to SX1 IS I would probably not sit quiet about this and only publish the results when it was done (or fail miserably somewhere along the way). I'm guessing a port may well be under development, but I have no idea where the people doing it are exchanging ideas.

As for Wiki: I'm new. I'm a n00b. I sincerely doubt you guys would look favorably on my super duper idea to trash the main page and start anew with some stupid layout that on top of not being informative enough also contains dead links, missing articles ant all the similar stuff Exaggeration intentional.
More seriously - how would one go about doing this?
For example - my primary focus with cameras is in videos. Just about any camera is better than my level of knowledge in (and feel for) photography so that only leaves video. I refuse to buy a standard video camera for a multitude of reasons which means that an important aspect of my camera purchase decision is what it can do with video.
So I found this page while looking for differences and possible solutions for the two models that I was comparing: SX1 IS and SX10 IS. Only yesterday I learned that the major difference between these cameras is in CCD. SX1 has a new super fast CMOS sensor, SX10 has an older model. I have no idea what other differences there are between these sensors, etc, etc.
So, looking for info on videos, i tried to determine whether the SX10 was capable of shooting 720p (which is enough for me), but at the same time, I needed the same info for SX1 as by default it only provides 1080p (+480p, but this is insufficient).
So far I have only learned a few things: limit #1 is by the sensor, limit #2 is the processor which compresses the movie into a stream, limit #3 is the card speed + camera <--> card interface speed.
I still have no knowledge about other limits, like why can't horizontal res be adjusted if the sensors only limit vertical res., why can't a lower frame rate be chosen, etc, etc
So, in the end I now have some knowledge about this, but I believe still not enough. I can write a page about this, but it will still lack lots of info. and then I would still have to place the new page somewhere into the wiki...

Sorry about all the whining, I'd like to help, but I am currently unqualified to do so, at least in my opinion.

[dlw]

Quote from: lrossel on 23 / November / 2008, 15:34:07

Maybe is a good Idea to divide this CHDK User Manual in parts, like:RAW.txt, Zebra.txt, OSD.txt.... in order to have smallest books more readable.

If I had one complaint about the wiki & the forum it would be that there is just too much information in it.    I decided I needed an in-camera manual as soon as I got CHDK working -- before I stumbled on this post and found lrossel had done it!  My work took a different direction:  I've made a series of small files -- one for each <Alt> menu.

In each file, I show the menu names in upper case to make them easy to find when you're scrolling through the screens of text.  A zipped archive of my current draft is attached.  It's still a draft because I'm going option-by-option through the menus, trying everything on my G9.  There are a bunch of menu entries I haven't found or written text for, and a few that I haven't gotten to do anything, but it looks like I should be finished in a month or so.

 I offer this mostly so you can see whether this multiple-file format would be useful to the community -- I have no desire to compete, just to support and make the CHDK autobuild better.  If you think this is valuable, it might be good to ask the community for suggestions to improve content and format.  I don't know how to do this -- any advice?

Thanks.

EDIT:  the attached file is obsolete.  See next post for ALTMENGD.ZIP

[dlw]

Folks,

Here is a guide to the CHDK <Alt> Menu.  It doesn't pretend to be a full users manual, but it does discuss every menu entry that I could find.  The attached zip is a collection of small text files, intended and formatted for in-camera viewing -- there is one file for each menu and sub-menu to minimize scrolling through a lot of text to get to the entry you want to view.  There is also an index of lowest-level entries to their parent menu and to the text file that describes them.

This set of files supersedes the preliminary set (called UserGuide.zip) in my 25 January post.

In the time it took to put this together, CHDK went from rev 686 to 706.  That's great work by the developers, but it makes documenters run to keep up.  This document set is good through rev 701 -- the changelog doesn't show any later changes that would make it obsolete.

Please take the time to try these out in your camera (perhaps storing the whole set in CHDK/BOOKS/ALTMENGD).  I'd welcome comments, corrections, suggestions -- I'd like to make this accurate for all cameras.  Maybe if enough people think this is a good presentation, it'll be added to the autobuild.

Thanks for your time.

UPDATE 4/8/09:  Version 1 was downloaded 21 times.
Version 1.1 (in sync with CHDKv0.9.7r727) is in the zip file below.

[Gimzim]

It looks like it's been a little while since anyone's posted in this thread, but I think the intentions to improve CHDK and the forum are still here, so I'll give some of my thoughts.

1. This is a pretty minor thing, but some of the Forum titles are excessively long. In particular, I'm talking about "Hello, I'm a NEWBIE - HELP!! (Newbies assistance, User Guides and thank you notes)" which could be shortened to, say, "Newbie assistance." Or even "New user help" (since I don't really like the word newb or n00b, but that's a different story). There are a few other titles that could be shortened also. This would just cut down on the clutter, which can detract a lot from the experience of using any website.

2. The initial instructions on how to set up CHDK could be more streamlined. I can explain this in more detail later, but I think that when I was reading about it the first time, I had to go to at least 2 different instruction pages, and go back and forth between them to make sure I didn't miss anything. It wasn't hard to figure out, but it just took some more time, and for some people that can be a bigger problem than for others. It really isn't that hard to install CHDK, so why make it a little harder when you don't need to?

Please don't take these suggestions as complaints. I hope they're helpful. I'm offering them in the spirit of improvement, and I'll contribute as I have time.

[HarpoMa]

I find the "search" often doesn't.  I usually end up needing to go to advanced search before any hits are found.  This probably causes lots of noob questions since they cannot find the answers by the default search.

[Gimzim]

I think one reason it can be hard to find answers using search is that they are often located in threads with a different topic. Sometimes it might be better to start a dedicated thread for a question, so it's easier for others to find.