Tutorial's Lacking in information

[Deathjam4]

I Apologize ahead of time if i come across offensive from this post head of time.

I have been going over all the tutorials and documentation CEGUI has to offer and not a single piece of it is useful. Granted any one who is a weathered veteran would understand how to implement these codes into a project. But all due respect even the basic tutorials might as well be Greek to me and i been coding for a year now. You need full on documentation on how to exactly get the code to work and videos of the process is the quickest and easiest way to get this in hand.

I myself was lucky enough to find a video for a older build of CEGUI that shows how to use cmake to make the DLL's and Lib files required. but everything after that i can't find. i would also judge by the amount of messages that pop up about this topic are in such a large bulk that the team who made cegui would be on top of righting out or making a short video to help users get past this huge problem you have been having for so long.

I think i speak for every one and myself included when i say Please either:

A) Include detailed documents with pictures to back up where and how to setup a project with CEGUI.
or
B) Setup a quick problay 5 - 10 minute video that walks you threw the setup steps so that everyone can finally figure out what your big heads understand and our beginner minds can grasp.

Not everyone is a rocket scientist like you think they are. I would think a group of people who can make something like this so easily would be more on top of things then siting around answering questions all day that a simple 10 minute video would solve.

[Ident]

Regarding project setup: Lucebac was so kind to create something for that. He made new files for glfw3 and SDL that can serve as a base for a new project. Basically what it does is creating a basic application using CEGUI. This should be what you want. I think it is in v0-8 repo already. Take a look at it maybe.

The wiki is a COMMUNITY wiki. We developers DO NOT maintain it except for a few specific pages. The official docs are in the API docu. If more people updated the wiki then the wiki would be better, you should ask yourself if you so far did enough to improve the wiki. Especially since, due to the specificness of this library, we have less users than Ogre and far less active users in the Wiki - Meaning that every active user is of big value to us. If more people contribute then the wiki will become way better and more up-to-date. We already got a great increase of contributors lately (big thanks to all of them and everyone who makes constructive change) but it can always be more.

Setup a quick problay 5 - 10 minute video that walks you threw the setup steps so that everyone can finally figure out what your big heads understand and our beginner minds can grasp.

If you are a beginner you should at least know how to set up a project (in your IDE) and you must understand what the settings there mean and which settings you have to adjust to link and include any arbitrary library. If you can't setup a project in Visual Studio ( or whatever you use ) then this is definitely not a CEGUI issue. This is an issue regarding your lack of understanding and knowledge of your IDE or the compiler you use. We won't teach you C++ or Visual Studio project setup. That is out of our scope and will always be. For everyone who knows these required basics, all the necessary info can be taken from the project settings of the SampleBrowser AND from the API docu. We have a video that shows you how to build in Visual Studio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaD-MQJLtWk

I think it is presumptuous to blame us for not guiding everyone through the specific settings in their specific IDE on their specific OS. You must know this yourself... We are not only doing a one-IDE and one-OS support. This project is multiplatform. Do you expect us to make a video for every IDE for every compiler for every CEGUI version? That is just beyond ridiculous and nobody of us (we all work for free) has time for that... If despite all documentation, despite the Samples, despite the SampleBrowser, you really need extra help, then you should maybe consider paid support. I am not trying to talk you into paying us anything. I am just saying that we can't cover every case of setup out there and when someone needs extra help that goes beyond the normal cases then this is the way to go. There is hundreds of projects using CEGUI (commercial and non-commercial) out there and those people all managed to set up their projects on their own, using their knowledge about C++, the compilers and the IDE they use.

[Kulik]

http://cegui.org.uk/paid-support

If you really mean this.

[Deathjam4]

Ok your not quite getting what i mean here. I am a new programer granted, But i do know how to setup a visual studio project and this is not my problem. I have a fully functioning version of my game, the cegui is what we are supposed to be using for the gui system ordered from my teams lead. But due to the lack of proper documentation of the gui not a single one of my team have any idea how this gui system works. Yes you have documented alot about your cegui system but the thing you are lacking is full documentation on how to actually do one set example.

All of your code tutorials do more jumping around then they are any good. and most of them don't include all the different types of build base info required. All of the programers writing about your gui system are all guessing that any one reading your documents instantly know exactly what they are thinking, or are going about what there talking about as conman conversational pieces that is jumping from topic to topic with out fully describing the previous piece of info first.

When writing documents or tutorials you have to expect that everyone reading has no experience what so ever. And the reason for that is because this is your code not there code, granted half the people using the code know exactly what to do and how but the other half that are filling your forums boards with 100's of messages a week have no idea what your talking about. Its great that the code is free, its awesome that it looks so good when people actually get it working, but its a complete shotgun to the head to figure out if you have not got more then 5 years experience coding with different types of code bases.

I don't expect you to completely read this due to your answers but im assuming you are not good with people who you think don't see eye to eye with you. Due to the responses i have read you strike me as a person who yells at people who does not do things you tell them the right way the first time. I mean no disrespect on saying that but its bad customer service if you think the customer is always wrong.

[lucebac]

Does this help you further?

https://bitbucket.org/lucebac/cegui/src ... ates-devel
https://bitbucket.org/lucebac/cegui/src ... ates-devel

It's very basic but it shows you exactly:
- what libraries you need
- how to initialiase cegui
- how to process in puts and
- how to shut down CEGUI in a clean way

[Kulik]

I realized it was not clear what I was getting at with the paid support either. If you want good docs you either have to help us write them, pay us to write them or hope somebody else will do the aforementioned. Writing docs is super hard work and is not rewarding to us at all. All the time we get people suggesting to "just improve the docs goddammit" but never helping with anything. Complaining doesn't help... We know things could be better, of course we know

We are constantly improving everything. It's a ton of really hard work! I have already hugely improved the docs all over CEGUI and I am willing to do more but I can't just burn tons of manhours on it without getting paid anything. Feel free to PM / email me if you are interested.

PS: Unless you pay me something you are not my customer Though I agree I tend to be rude sometimes, I am working on it.

[Ident]

What Kulik is really is trying to say is: Ethically you owe us something if you get something from using our library. And not the other way around. And what you owe us is not primarily money, don't misunderstand Kulik's directions there. I will explain in the following:

This is Open Source, everything is free to be used AS-IS. And that is the point: AS IT IS. Now if you want something EXTRA, then it would actually be correct to assume you would offer us some money (we do not ask for much) to compensate for the many hours of development or docu-writing we would have to invest for creating this extra that YOU specifically desire. If this is a specific job then you actually have all legit right to make demands there. The CEGUI developer team's (unpaid) contributions are limited to how much time we feel like spending on this project next to work, university and our other hobbies. This is volunteer time, and we get nothing for this. What we can actually ask you for, when you use our library, is simply the following : Participation.

Now what does that mean: "Participation": For example, if you got a specific issue you can ask about it on the forums and if you do so we do help you, and everyone else, as can clearly be seen by our forum activity in the Help forum. Now what would your participation based on that be? Let is assume your issue is resolved after somebody's help on the forum (not necessarily ours, you can also help others, which is already a participation on its own). Now you can go and fix the (faulty or incomplete?) API Docu (via making a pull request) or just edit the respective Wiki page directly with your forum account.

If you do not help others users, do not participate in development and do not improve the docus and tutorials of this Open source project, then you are basically only TAKING but never GIVING anything back. Therefore you have, ethically seen, absolutely no right to make any demands to us or any other contributor, at all.

Any other behaviour (such as paragaph-long rants about how allegedly none of our documentation is helpful, how we must make videos for every OS every compiler and every CEGUI version in existance, etc - all that coming from someone who has not contributed anything to this Open Source project so far) has to be seen as somewhat egocentric and rude. Especially if you slander a developer as someone who "who yells at people who does not do things you tell them the right way the first time" after being told that we cannot possibly make a video for every setup in this world. I took the time to direct you to anything I considered to be possibly helpful for you to get CEGUI running: The youtube video to get the SampleBrowser built and lucebac's new files, which, like mentioned, are probably what you need. Instead, you came up with a response just to defame me. This seriously raises the question why anyone should help someone like you in their spare time, especially as you counter reasonable arguments with insults..

[Kulik]

I will just clarify that I don't believe anybody using this library owes us anything, ethically or otherwise. However if you demand something, you probably should offer some incentives. We tend to take people who contribute way way way more seriously than random complainers. We also tend to take people who give us contract jobs (yes, money) way way way more seriously.

[Ident]

Well I do not consider contributions a must in general. I do not contribute to most other Open Source projects that I use. But I consider it a requirement once your put yourself into a position where you are making demands towards the project's developers. If you have never given anything you can't ask for more than they already did for you. And this "giving" does not necessarily have to be directed to us developers. Just help any other user. Just edit an outdated wiki page. Small things matter a lot. Many such small changes make a "good" Open Source project a "great" one.

Sorry if I was not clear about this in my post. I hope i clarified it now.

[Deathjam4]

I apologize again if i came across demanding or rude believe me that is not my intent. And as for contribution, well I would be more then happy to help contribute on my spare time as well. I don't expect you to make videos for every code imaginable it was just a suggestion for some of the more widely used ones as it would be invaluable to any one using CEGUI. And thank you for the linked files they were and are the most helpful information i have gotten so far and greatly put up the pace of my coding from a snails pace to more of a walking pace.

Everything i have said for the most part was just suggestion weather you decide to see if any of what i said would help is totally up to you i just mean to help by making a few suggestions i thought might help save you time from having to answer tons of forums posts which would in turn help bring you more time to code and improve things further.

So once again Thank you for some of the clarification and sorry For any misconstrued intentions.

[Nyast]

Do you have actual examples of what you mean by a lack of documentation ?

I started using CEGUI a week ago, and I had an issue related to compiling/linking the DX11 renderer module with my app, which was promptly addressed on this forum. After that, it took me a couple hours to integrate CEGUI into a custom engine. Overall I'd say everything has been pretty straightforward, and the docs/wiki are good enough to get you a basic GUI going. Granted, I'm a pretty experienced programmer, but I really didn't see any major issue with the docs.

And did you run/have a look at the sample browser ? There are tons of demo apps in it.

[Deathjam4]

Well my biggest fault and my teams fault is we are in school learning programing, and most of us have literally only scratched the surface of the coding knowledge base. We should have given up on this before we got so far into our project but stubborn heads and asuraties that coding with cegui was easy was a conman positive impression we blindly fell for. Yes it is easy to use for experienced programers, but no its hard to grasp for noobs in this situation. The main thing that we could not figure out was actually getting cegui to render in the directx code but we have since thanks to the help of the forums and some helpful documents and videos we manged to get it to work.

So in short the biggest issue here was just a lack of background experience which no one but our self's can be blamed. Thank you all for the help it is gratefully appreciated and a lot that has been discussed hear has brought much clarity to confusion i once had here.