Better documentation

Posted by xl-network on December 31, 2009 at 11:42am

5 followers

Issue Summary

Hi,

I'm a happy user of the trackfield module (as it's the only one of reading and displaying my GPX files in a Google Map). But I have some questions / requests. The documentation on this module is poor. For instance, I want to create a graph with elevation or speed, but I can't get it to work. I've got no errors but it's unclear how to set it up etc. Is there any way that the documentation will be updated?

Thank's in advance,
Wilfred (aka. XL-Network)

Comments

#1

Posted by Zayphod on December 31, 2009 at 9:17pm

I'll second this request. I really like this module but it has taken me about a month to get it working mostly all the way. I can't get the text to appear in the graphs. Perhaps some better documentation and pictures to show a generic setup?

#2

Posted by raintonr on January 7, 2010 at 1:21am

If some people (re: #1) have figured it out there's nothing stopping you expanding the documentation here:

http://drupal.org/node/256138

That does explain the basics of how to get it to work. What headings/topics do you want to see included there?

#3

Posted by xl-network on January 25, 2010 at 1:31pm

I think the first thing to do is include some basic examples of how to setup the different parts of this module. For instance graphs... can't seem to get it working. And stats also, don't even know how to use it.

#4

Posted by smscotten on May 10, 2010 at 8:01am

@raintonr Not for nothing, but expecting documentation to be written by the people that don't understand how to use the module (ie the people requesting documentation) is at best unrealistic. I say "at best" because a whole lot of inaccurate documentation would be even worse than a lack of documentation.

#5

Posted by raintonr on May 13, 2010 at 4:35am

Can anyone be more specific about what exactly is lacking from the instructions here:

http://drupal.org/node/256138

And what they would like to see.

#6

Posted by smscotten on May 13, 2010 at 4:55am

I didn't mean to suggest that the documentation is poor; it's quite good compared with most Drupal modules. I just meant that documentation really is the sort of thing where "scratch your own itch" doesn't work so well.

My only suggestions for additions or changes are:

Roll parts of my answer here: http://drupal.org/node/274516 into that page. Since someone asked, clearly there's some need for the information.

Some information on the file formats would be helpful. I'm almost totally ignorant about all of the file formats that work with Trackfield, but the one thing I learned from getting this module set up is that TCX files can contain multiple tracks, which won't work with Trackfield. It made sense after I examined the TCX file coming out of my Garmin and found that there is no way to export a single track. The other file formats may have similar pitfalls.

My suggestion is a pretty weak one, but again I wasn't trying to slam your docs, just pointing out that the people who need it won't be the ones who write it.

#7

Posted by smscotten on May 14, 2010 at 4:57pm

Yeah, I'll add on to that. Information about file formats would be really helpful and prevent frustration.

Look at these two components: support for file formats (eg KML, TCX etc) is great! The Track Statistics sub-module where I can show the time or distance (and other information) is also great! So I expected that if I could find conversion that turns the output of my Garmin into KML files that I could turn on Track Statistics, add a couple of fields, and see my times and distances.

What happened? I did that and came up with all zeroes. So is there a bug in the module? Maybe. Digging into the XML file, I see no information at all about times or distances. So I'm guessing that it's the wrong tool for the job. Guessing because all I read here was about a feature and support—nothing about whether the file format support would be compatible with the feature.

It makes me wonder how many other "bugs" you're struggling to fix have nothing to do with your code but simply exist because the user is using a file format that doesn't have support for the expected feature.