Documentation (manual) must keep hold and publish example files
In this thread:
I could not recreate the example that was shown in this online manual page:
docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/geometry_nodes/utilities/compare.html
and thus I asked them to publish the original file. This is what I wrote:
I personally don't see the amount of work that you claim to have manage. They are just the same as any other materials that you have to deal with, like images etc. The information however it's very important because it might be passing to one of your relatives or even for yourself as references. Nobody can read and remember everything but it is good idea to store what have you done in order to trace back to where it has been and that is more important than anything else. It is called knowledge.
1 Comment
Last I looked at it the manual still had some images back from the pre-2.8 days, obvious by the different default lighting for the solid shaded viewport and the different default theme for the UI. This might've changed and there might be more 2.8 or 2.9 images now, but either way the manual is not constantly up to date. Here's a quick one - the musgrave texture used to output "Fac" in 2.8 and before, this got renamed (of course, it still works the same)
If there were files from back then, they would not work very well now and someone would need to do the extra work to create a brand new file to make sure it works perfectly fine, unlike an old image which is good enough.
E.g. someone opens up a 2.79 file and is now confused why there's a bunch of weirdly named collections. Naming your collections "Collection 1", "Collection 7" and "Collection 39" is not normal. Or why all current Blender videos show people using metric units but the units are completely missing in that file.
At the very least, there are many settings which are stored in the Blend file, and which as Blender updates may be changed in the default startup file. An obvious example, again, being metric units vs no units. All of these settings will also need to be updated then for all files in the manual.
The manual doesn't have that much manpower to keep it so updated, as is already clear with the not super up-to-date images.