Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald
Ok, here is a perfect example of why documentation needs to be simplified for many users. I know more about computers than most of my friends yet the above passage made absolutely NO sense to me whatever. And, to be honest, I don't care what it means. I'm not a programmer and don't want to be...
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I think you hit the nail right on the head. Regular Expressions are a tool for programmers. In fact a "regular expression" (regex) is a kind of "shorthand" for finding and (optionally) changing a letter or number sequence, which has any kind of pattern. Those of us old enough to remember short-hand as a method to record dictation, can think of regular expressions as "shorthand programs". A person without some computer programming knowledge should not feel bad if they cannot understand regular expressions, these are non-trivial and very powerful program structures.
A point that comes to mind though is this, how many regular expression are needed for Calibre? I have a programming background so can hack a regex together for my needs, but there is probably a set of regex classes that cover 90% of Calibre user requirements. Classifying the regexs used and listing them in a sticky would be one thing. But looking deeper at the root cause behind the need for the regex is the next step. Wherein the "capability" behind the requirement is implemented as a button or menu item within the program itself.