[Hopperxx] ***SPAM*** Re: ***SPAM*** Re: yay hopper

[Buzz Kettles]

Oh Jim's question: the 'tech writer' was also a team (of technical writers)
- their members also changed with each release.
Their biggest problem was that they had to start writing from specs, and as
the features would be fleshed out, the specific details would always change.

*The best documentation for Director was always the actual product itself -
it did what it did & if it didn't then don't do that.*Luckily, it was
pretty flexible & you could often do things multiple ways ...


On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 8:42 PM Buzz Kettles <buzzkett at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's a long time ago so bear with me
> &* if anybody wants to correct my recollections**, please feel free to do
> so*
>
> As far as who was in charge of what, the Director management team
> changed with nearly every release.
> Individual team members got focused on whatever new features were being
> included in that release.
> We paired 1 DEV with 1 QA for each new feature.
> At the time of d5 release, the 'Director team' was actually several
> teams:d5 (desktop), Shockwave+player and the original Xtras team (+ some
> long term planning groups).
> As the releases moved from d5 to d6 to d7 (and for dot releases), these
> teams were shuffled to meet release requirements.
> Dot releases were a distraction on the main flow, but absolutely necessary
> for the product to reach a 'reference release' that would sit happily in
> the market for roughly 1.5 years.
>
> Some features rcvd ongoing updates and so some devs stayed with a
> particular feature thru more than a single release..
> JT always seemed to have some Lingo architectural work with each release
> (duh).
> From d6 on, Greg Yachuck always included some sound updates (these were
> often experiments that became new features when marketing heard about them)
> Glenn Ruhle did Text for D5 & 6, & then Alex held that chair for D7 (I
> think).
> The original Shockwave team members generally continued to support the
> networking processes.
>
> BUT everything was in flux from d5 to d7.
>
> d5 was desktop, mac/win, old player, multi-cast
> Shockwave 5 incorporated the swa Xtra set & streaming sound w/SoundEdit 16
> to make the swas (mp3 was still an unknown)
> d6 (originally d5.5) glued in swa (allowed compressed audio in
> projectors!) and I think had bhvrs + maybe the full blown score (& lots
> more)
> d6.5 added Flash + other 'original Xtras (I think)
> d7 was the rebuild of the Director UI, attached to the player, requiring
> several new Xtras. - the UI had many features that folks didn't know
> existed, so we had a very BIG checklist incorporating every UI element &
> interaction.
> As we discovered, the Paint window had tons of 'hidden' features that had
> been incorporated way, way back in the 80s - the beta program helped find a
> lot of these.
> d7.0.2 polished up d7
> d8  was more polish + it's attendant new features
> d8.5 was 3D - a massive update that doubled the size of Lingo.  IMHO it
> should have been called d9.
>
> I hope this helps
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM Darrel Plant <dplant at moshplant.com> wrote:
>
>> Not so much the tech writers as other folks in the dev group. I didn’t
>> always know who was in charge of what; I would have loved to have been more
>> tied into the inner workings of the team, but my imposter syndrome
>> inclination to be amazed that I was included at all kept me from asking
>> questions when I should have.
>>
>> Buzz Kettles is on here, he was inside the team the whole time I was
>> writing remotely and knows more names and actual roles than I remember at
>> this vasty remove.
>>
>> > On Jul 11, 2025, at 12:41 PM, Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Were you in touch with the tech writer(s) who worked on Director? Who
>> were they?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>>         Darrel Plant     phone: 503-490-1388   dplant at moshplant.com
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  “I’ve flashed in a lot of pans in my time." -- Darrel Plant
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
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