I'm very aware of, and very grateful for the amazing efforts that af123, Ezra Pound, drutt and others have put into this project, and quite embarrassed to stick in an unwanted oar by suggesting that things could be done in any way differently. It's a fine line between offering to help and interfering. In my mind these improvements belong to the people who created them and it's very presumptive of me and others to do anything that smacks of 'taking over'. Nevertheless, if I can assist, I'd like to do so.
I don't think this thing really started out as a 'project' at all - initially it was just a couple of people tinkering to overcome some of the Humax's most obvious foibles and failings. Over the months, it's become a real project as its complexity has grown and once the need for documentation became clear, documenters joined in and did a pretty good job, all things considered. It's not easy, outside a proper business environment, to establish standards and create a serious 'product' rather than a set of hobbiest routines, especially when nobody's getting paid for their efforts! Now, of course, the documentation 'belongs' to the documenters who took it on in the same way as the code belongs to the original coders and again, butting in is an uncomfortable business.
One thing I did learn in my years managing a technical publications department is that coders rarely want to get too involved in documentation. No aspersions cast - it's just a different sort of activity that requires different skills and appeals to different personalities. So perhaps our BYTs are not actually too unhappy that someone else is prepared to write the instructions.
I've also been a little surprised (given that the Fox series is now getting a little long in the tooth) how many new users have been appearing in these forums recently. In some cases, they've come in with quite basic questions, in others with quite advanced and specific enquiries. The body of documentation almost certainly includes answers to the basic questions but - for whatever reason - the posters seem to have difficulty finding them, to BH's exasperation... The more advanced issues are undocumented and, given the enthusiasm of the coding experts, often produce a flurry of activity that would probably be regarded as uneconomic in a business environment.
I'm inclined to agree with BH's suggestion that a pdf document containing all the basic operations of the enhanced system would be useful to a lot of people. The wiki is what the wiki should be - as EP says - and contains more items, but in less detail, than a pdf manual. The plethora of helpful but unstructured posts scattered around these forums - some of which I'm responsible for - are useful only to people who manage to find them and are uneditable by anyone except the original author. Sometimes they are duplicated and give conflicting advice.
Finally (you'll be glad to know), I'd like to ask if anyone has any idea just how big the Humax mods user base actually is. Documentation effort really needs to take some account of the size of the potential audience.
