[ic] Advice on learning Interchange?

[Peter]

On 17/03/10 14:00, Charles Quartz wrote:
> When I recently discovered Interchange, I was exited; it seemed to be
> exactly what I was looking for. Then, I installed the demo and looked
> at index.html, where I saw [control] and [control-set] tags. When I
> looked to the documentation to find out what they do, my heart sank.
> It turns out the documentation for these tags gives no clue to the
> uninitiated. That's just one example; the documentation in general is
> surprisingly sparse for a program that's been around so long.

There are a few different sources of documentation.  There is the
"official" XML docs at <http://www.icdevgroup.org/xmldocs/>, the old
documentation at <http://www.icdevgroup.org/interchange-doc-5.2.0/> and
the RTFM docs at <http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/icdocs/index.html>.
Usually you can find some reference to what you're looking for in one of
those three documentation sources.  In the case of the [control] and
[control-set] tags, the RTFM docs have them fairly well documented:
<http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/icdocs/tags/control.html>
<http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/icdocs/tags/control-set.html>

It takes some getting used to the various docs and if you're having
difficulty please feel free to post to the mailing list here or pop into
IRC chat and ask for help.  There is usually someone who will gladly
answer your questions for you.

> Before giving up and moving on, I wanted to ask if there are any
> people on this list who managed to learn how to use Interchange on
> their own, and if so, how did you go about it?

Sure there are.  Interchange is not the easiest program to learn though.
 I learned by just jumping in and struggling through over time.


Peter