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Looper's Delight
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I think the EDP manual is pretty good, though clearly more of a reference manual than a user's manual. A good user's manual teaches you how to do something. A reference manual reminds you of the details of something you are already familiar with. Arguably, the reference manual is more important since the system must at least be comprehensively specified. For systems as complex as the EDP, it is very, VERY hard to write a good user's manual. From my own experience with the manual, I can offer a few suggestions, though this is a rather academic exercise since I doubt Gibson is going to pay for another revision. First, I found the transition from the User's Guide to Parameters disorienting. I think Functions should have been first. I was expecting more depth on the User's Guide material but got lost in parameter details without having a good mental model for how those might actually be used. Functions should be presented in order of "popularity" rather than alphabetically. Sure everyone has a different way of approaching the EDP, but I'll bet the top 10 functions of interest will be pretty much the same for 99% of new users. Put brain contorting features like InterfaceMode and Loop Windowing last. There is enough to digest without having those bombs dropped on you in the middle. Possibly an "Advanced" section to contain those things that you won't understand until you already have a good grasp of basic functions. I found myself bouncing between the Parameters and Functions sections often in order to understand something. Some things were mostly specified in Parameters, others in Functions, others a mixture. I'd prefer that the bulk of the text be oriented around functions, with each function fully specifying how it interacts with parameters. This may result in some amount of duplicated parameter docs. The Parameters section then reduces to more of a pure alphabetical reference, with a brief summary of what it does and references back to the Functions that are affected by it. The problem with this approach is that some parameters like Quantize affect lots of functions and you don't want to duplicate it everywhere. For this and a few other things I would add a "Concepts" section that precedes Functions. Here you introduce what functions, parameters, and presets are. Then a few broadly applicable concepts like like Feedback, Quantize, MoreLoops, maybe SwitchQuant, and some things in the Functions section that aren't really functions like SUS Commands and LoopDivide. I might move interesting but not very practical information like "Undo/Under The Hood" to an Appendix. The "Parameter Presets" and "User Interface" felt sort of buried, I would probably place them higher, certainly above Synchronization and MIDI Control, and maybe after Concepts. The downside of course is that the text would contain terms that aren't fully defined until the Parameters and Functions sections. Now, I don't want to sound too critical. These are debatable editorial choices that should not detract from the fact that the manual is extremely comprehensive and accurate. I have great respect for the authors, writing for complex systems is a very hard job. Jeff