[ImageJ-devel] Documentation for ImageJ2

[Gabriel Landini]

On Monday 06 Jun 2011 03:57:48 Tiago Ferreira wrote:
> - Could the guide be extended to ImageJ2? (A new chapter?) Or should it
> cease with 1.45 and a new one be written for IJ2? In which modality then?

I would think to keep the IJ1 until that time and  then re-adapt for IJ2. 
Since some people might stick to IJ1 you want to keep that available.
Many entries in the menus will remain similar, so the current manual entries 
might still be valid for IJ2.
 
> Suggestions/Comments:
> _ I think self-contained user documentation is very important. I know some
> of you would prefer a wiki-like user guide. My experience however tells me
> that average lay users don't. My opinion is that self-contained documents
> are key to non-power users and wikis best suitable for advance usage and
> How-Tos.

The easiest thing is to have an online resource until it matures, but as you 
have experienced, this evolves constantly. If you want many people to 
contribute, it will be difficult to work on a single document, so perhaps a 
plan on what to work it would be the best. 
Most importantly we need to learn from past errors. The Wiki at tudor 
documentation has not worked as first thought it would (to help Wayne) as 
still Wayne adds the new features to his pages, but these cannot be edited 
from the outside.

> - It would be great if IJ2 users had more visible access to documentation.
>   Something like Fiji's "Help on Menu Item" would be great.

You have to think if a local copy of the documentation or an active link are 
needed.
 
> - BTW, from a strictly usage point of view, IJ has some big flaws (e.g.,
> the notorious interpretation of binary images via the blackBackground
> option). It would be great if IJ2 featured more user-friendliness.

In IJ2 there should be a single place where at startup for the first time one 
is required to answer what kind of polarity one wants images to have. Then 
store this in config file. Unfortunately in IJ1 this evolved over time and so 
one has to set things in 2 or 3 places. 
Most importantly, inverted LUTs are just not helpful when creating masks, just 
confusing if one is thinking on applying logical operations between images.
That needs a bit of thinking to avoid this in IJ2. The ugly side of this is 
that when exchanging macros, one runs the risk of using a macro that is 
assuming a different polarity than the current setting.

Cheers
G.