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rchoucroun
Contributor
I think the documentation is in desparate need of improvement. Some examples and clearer wording would be very helpful.This excerpt from the Intersector Transformer is a good example of a help page that needs some improvement:"Note that you could also access the individual street names by "exposing" some elements of your list (by right clicking on the attribute unqualified list name (in our example, "all_streets{}.NAME") and saying "Expose Elements", and entering the number of elements to expose. You'd then have to do something with those elements in your translation. (The disadvantage of this approach is that you need to know ahead of time how many list elements you want to work with -- so if 3 streets intersect at the same node and you only set yourself up to handle two, you'd have to do something special to handle that.)"Ok, I need to do something special. Care to elaborate?
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9 replies

fmelizard
Safer
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  • fmelizardSafer
  • Safer
  • October 29, 2015
+1 to Robs comment on the documentation.As with the VAR idea to reference FME Version in FMEPedia ideas, I think that would be good in the documentation too.While PHP certainly has its drawbacks, its documentation is second to none - i.e. http://php.net/manual/en/function.strlen.php - exemplifies version numbering changes, has an example, includes "See also", plus "Notes", and all the normal doc things tooPlus of course User comments as well (also often helpful).
C
  • chester
  • October 30, 2015
Agreed. The documentation is in desperate need of improvement. I had a hard time getting into FME. If it wasn't for the job I would have dropped it all together instantly.

 

Take the ListBuilder for example. "Combines attributes of the input features into a single list structure."

 

Followed by one example. WTF?! This is just lazy.

 

FME your better than this. Don't be afraid. It's alright to make more than one example and write more text to make it clearer. Garnish it with videos, workbenches and different use cases.

 

Here is a good example how to make a documentation. https://support.solidangle.com/display/AFMUG/Arnol...

 

If you want to up those sales you should make your products more accessible. So people can pick it up more quickly and won't shy away.

 

fmelizard
Safer
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  • fmelizardSafer
  • Safer
  • October 31, 2015
Good feedback. We will continue to work on improving documentation, especially at the transformer level. We do know that FME has a steep learning curve and will keep trying to make that easier. Given that both the examples here involve Lists there may be an opportunity to have a topic just to introduce that admittedly non-standard (but outrageously powerful) concept. This new Knowledge Center site we hope will help, and we'll work hard to tie the examples we place in here back to the documentation (which we'll try to remove examples from) as we continue to modernize moving forward.
sigtill
Supporter
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  • sigtillSupporter
  • Supporter
  • November 2, 2015

What about displaying even more images, or even an animated gif showing the various settings and the end result for one feature?

The real SigTill
D
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  • dr_ysg
  • November 30, 2015

Here is what I would like:

1. Add a section on the motivation for the transformer. E.g. here is why you want to use a FeatureMerger, and where it will need it.

2. Add a section for the theory and operation of the transformer. That is give me a flow-chart of how it reads and changes the data. Explain it for both the Computer Science guy and for the GIS guy. But tell me what does and illustrate it.

3. Create a JSFiddle or JSBIN, or CodePen like playground for each major transformer, so that I can play with parameters. Power it by FME cloud. Let me play with the parameters with a small sample data set. if you restrict it to one transform and small data, it should not cost that much to run, and you could limit it to maybe 20 tries per day if you are worrried about cost.

fmelizard
Safer
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  • fmelizardSafer
  • Safer
  • December 1, 2015

Great ideas all. Thanks!

fmelizard
Safer
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  • fmelizardSafer
  • Safer
  • March 28, 2016

Animated GIFs are truly a great way to explain things for sure.

fmelizard
Safer
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  • fmelizardSafer
  • Safer
  • March 28, 2016

Note that we've increased the size of the documentation team specifically so we can do better here. We'll keep you posted. There should be results in the FME 2017 betas before super long.

kimo
Contributor
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  • kimoContributor
  • Contributor
  • May 16, 2016

I am often disappointed that the help does not solve my problem! Yes, I know this is silly, but it is how I feel after trying to understand why a transformer does not work. There is a lot of jargon and circular description in the parameter descriptions and often no examples when searching the knowledgebase. Surely there should be at least one example for every transformer.

I also find that there are critical dependencies between transfomers. eg when using LineJoiner with a group item, the features must be sorted. Should the help not mention that? The link to the FME Knowledge Center for 2016.1 fails in LineJoiner as do most links.

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