Thanks for your opinion. We have this in various places; one of the first is here.
Why are there so many modules?
You might wonder why Darktable has over 60 modules when you only need a handful. There are two reasons for this:
Backward Compatibility: If you edited a photo 5 years ago, the old module must still exist today so that your image still looks exactly the same.
Special Cases: Even though modern modules (like AgX or Tone Equalizer) usually do the job better, there are still niche cases where an old module is exactly the right tool.
From what I see, you are trying to provide a useful reference for new darktable users, and that is commendable. At the same time, the writing (at least in English) is narrow/closed minded and polarizing, and could generate long term bias in new users against older but still useful modules (and D or S isn’t even old!). Instead of trashing the older modules, how about saying something like “stick to the short list of modules we recommend here until you have made yourself comfortable in darktable”.
I agree with this and this is the point I have tried to make. Even when I teach face to face DT classes I select modules that I prefer to keep the process simple. Also some people have old clunkers of computers or computers without suitable GPU cards and modules like diffuse or sharpen can cause a bottle neck and therefore the sharpen module may be preferable for these people. Probably some more modules that benefit from good computer specs as well.
But I do see it as commendable to highlight the important modules that beginners should learn first.
I suggest taking a closer look at the site itself rather than getting hung up on individual words or taking them out of context. The discussion about “D&S” serves as a good example here – the site actually explains the nuances quite clearly if you read the full text.
After I initially launched the German version, I received several requests for English and Dutch translations. Without this additional help from the community, the current state of the project wouldn’t have been possible.
Furthermore, we have received countless helpful ideas and suggestions from Facebook, Reddit, and here on pixls.us. Without this invaluable support, the site as it is today would not exist.
As previously mentioned: We deeply appreciate Darktable and the developers’ outstanding work. This site is not a criticism of Darktable or its developers – quite the opposite. We are convinced that Darktable is a fantastic piece of software. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t be putting all this effort into darktable.info.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think anyone is really suggesting you are criticizing Darktable or the developers. I think the concern is that the project is trying to give an authoritative lesson on how to use Darktable, that there’s a right way and wrong way.
While there’s nothing wrong with having an opinion on the best way to use Darktable, it becomes a bit problematic when the language used can actively dissuade people from experimenting, discovering, exploring and ultimately using all the great stuff, new and old.
The ethos behind Darktable is that of a toolbox with maximum control given to the user. Educating and celebrating this ethos and how Darktable is different from other software is a valuable service to new users. For example, I might not tell users to start with Color Lookup Table, which is an “old” module, but I would certainly encourage them to experiment with it and not to ignore it, as it’s incredibly powerful and easy to use.
So, I think the main point is that the current language used is being a bit dogmatic. Tweaking the language and approach would make all the difference: so something like:
Could you please send me a private message with the pages and sections that are problematic? I’d be happy to take another look at them and discuss them with the team.
I think this thread has highlighted the types of language that can be considered problematic - words like baggage, outdated, legacy, etc.
And other than that, it’s just the general approach to take that you might want to think about.
But ultimately, it’s up to you whether you agree and want to take any of this onboard and act on it.
I think you are providing a useful resource. At the same time, a lot of people are uncomfortable with the presentation style of the English version. This may be a result of none of the team for the site being native English speakers. We do have numerous people here on pixls.us for whom English is their first language. Would you be open to pull requests on your English version?
I feel a bit torn bringing this up, because I know that the darktable manual isn’t up to date and pleas from the developers have not resulted in many contributions. So, I don’t know whether it is better for people to help with the darktable manual or darktable.info.
I unfortunately can’t do much myself right now, because I am totally slammed at work (I’ve spent about 3 hours with my camera since mid-May).
@afre, I think splitting the thread somewhere in the area of post 16-19 would be good. People might not readily find the darktable.info content based on the title of the current thread.
Thanks for the positive reply (whilst I do not mean other replies were not positive!). Yes darktable.info will welcome English native speakers and writers very much! We look explicitly for such an enrichment in another post.
I do not know about others - but I feel both information sources serve a bit different goal or user group. And I feel that the more use and support there is for darktable the better the chances are for finding people who contribute to the manual as well.
I - for example - would be really happy and proud to contribute to the manual as well.
While that is true in practice, we’d (I guess I’m speaking for @elstoc here too, hope that’s OK) would like it not to be true.
We do have a workflow section in the manual, it explains how to get a base edit (an image that generally looks good) in like 5 steps, then suggests some other modules depending on what you want to do. I think you’re beginning to see why that is based on feedback here.
While it would be nice to have some very opinionated tutorials in the manual, the expectation is that the manual is ever-green and continually updated to match the current version of darktable. Since we can not keep up with just the reference portion of the manual, adding more stuff that we have to commit to maintaining doesn’t make any sense. I do appreciate that we have a few new contributions who are doing work to get the reference portion up to date, but it isn’t enough. If there were 10-15 people working on the canonical manual, there wouldn’t be a lot for any one person to do at any given time, and I think it’d be relatively easy to keep things up to date. We currently do not have that.
Generally sure, but practically, it seems like we’ve been adding users for a while, yet there aren’t that many who contribute to the manual. Here comes another pretty hefty resource, and now we’re asking people to contribute to it, while the canonical project resources are still not in a good place.
There will always be some fracturing of resources, but this one feels larger than others.
As someone who does documentation for a living, I can tell you that your translation strategy, or lack there of, is going to get cumbersome really quickly. You need a way to track exactly what has changed in the source language (which appears to be German) and propagate those changes to the translation. Right now it all appears to be manual work, as is evident to links in the English pointing to German, and I can tell you that it gets tiring very quickly.
Appreciate your thoughts a lot. And I can not speak for others. But I tried to work out the instructions at dtdocs/README.md at master · darktable-org/dtdocs · GitHub
And I miserably failed. And at the time I made clear it did not work for me there was support, albeit not very effective for me. I do not mean I do not appreciate the attempts that have been made!
I let it rest for a while. But that doesn’t mean I’m no longer interested in doing so.
I hardly dare to raise this here: might it be too big of a hurdle for many to start contributing? So in my view part of the problem might be accessibility, not motivation.
Anyway I still would love to contribute to the manual. But I do - as a nearly complete non technician - need some effective support.
And I also feel we might be perfectly capable to find another one or two to contribute to the manual.
I have, for now, stopped raising doc PRs because of the long backlog - I have, for instance, some doc PRs which were raised 8 months ago which have not yet been reviewed. Until the backlog shifts, I’m not likely to raise more PRs.
This is not a complaint, I do realise reviewing takes time, and no-one has the time to do it.
Thank you for the feedback; that reflects the consensus. While a few posts revisit the original topic, I made a clean split beginning at post #16 and onward.
Hi @Qor, I think that the quote above summarizes very well the issue that some of us (even simple users, like myself) are taking with some of the wording used in darktable.info.
If the site were called “Chris’ take on darktable” the reaction would have been very different.
But it’s called “darktable.info”, which sounds kind of affiliated with / backed by darktable, and this creates an understandable expectation that the information that it contains represents correctly the philosophy of darktable and its user base.
In this light, there is a big difference between, e.g.,
DT has a lot of modules. As you become more expert you may want to learn to use all of them, but if you are just starting you can go a long way with just 5 of them. Here they are.
and
These are the 5 modules that you must use. Forget about the other ones, they are just legacy stuff for those who are forced to use them or don’t know better
The overall tone of darktable.info appears to me to be closer to the latter, which for the aforementioned reasons ends up ruffling some feathers (TM paperdigits).
You keep repeating that you are adopting this stance to be direct and not confuse the users. But I am not convinced that this is a good argument. The two paragraphs above have the same length, and they convey the same core information (i.e., “let’s focus on this basic set of modules”). However, the former is something that, I would argue, represents well the spirit of the community, whereas the latter does not.
Again, I hope that it’s clear that this is meant as constructive feedback to improve a very worthy undertaking. I bet that more people would be happy to contribute if they felt that the website is better aligned with the philosophy of the project.
It would be easier for me if you could link the pages and include the problematic paragraph. I’d be happy to take a closer look and discuss it with the team.
