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I completed the generic Syntorial course (https://www.syntorial.com/) as well as the lesson packs for Serum, Massive and Sylenth. The generic course helped me understand synthesizers in general and the lesson packs helped me understand these popular synth models.

I suggest that the Zyn-Fusion user manual follow a similar organization of material. What is here is great because it is specific to Zyn-Fusion. However, a student who is trying to learn the synthesizer may want to know first how Zyn-Fusion handles the roles of a generic synthesizer before learning about the features that are specific to Zyn-Fusion.

I suggest creating a new page that outlines the generic features of a synthesizer and links to pages on how to achieve the sound in Zyn-Fusion. The generic lessons from the Syntorial course are listed below.

1. Your basic sound

• Saw and Pulse Waveforms
• Pulse Width

2. Brightness

• Low Pass Filter
• Cutoff and Main Volume

3. Volume, Press and Release

• Amp Envelope Attack
• Amp Envelope Release

4. Expanding Your Basic Sound

• Doubling and Transposing (3 parts)

5. Brightness, Press and Release

• Filter Envelope
• Filter Envelope Attack
• Filter Envelope Release
• Filter Envelope Attack and Release
• Filter and Amp Envelopes

6. Echos

• Delay
• Delay Time
• Delay Feedback
• Delay Spread

7. Changing Volume While Holding

• Amp Envelope Sustain
• Amp Envelope Decay
• Full Amp Envelope

8. Smearing and Pulsating

• Doubling and Detuning (3 parts)

9. Changing Brightness While Holding

• Filter Envelope Decay and Sustain
• Full Filter Envelope
• Filter and Amp Envelopes

10. Bottom End

• Sub Oscillator (4 parts)

11. Repeating Movement

• LFO Destination
• LFO Amount
• LFO Waveform
• LFO Rate

12. Point

• Filter Resonance
• Filter Resonance and Envelope
• Filter Resonance and LFO

13. So Many Notes

• Mono and Poly Voice Modes
• Poly Mode and Amp Release

14. Bigger and Better

• Unison
• Unison Detune
• Unison Spread
• Unison and Multiple Oscillators

15. Putting Your Sound in a Room

• Reverb
• Reverb Size
• Reverb Mix and Size

16. Smooth and Connected

• Legato Voice Mode
• Portamento
• Portamento and Legato Mode

17. Expanding Your Palate

• Triangle Waveform
• Mixing Triangle Waveform
• Triangle and Filter Cutoff

18. Smearing, Pulsating and Widening

• Chorus
• Chorus Rate
• Types of Pulsation

19. Changing Pitch Over Time

• Mod Envelope
• Mod Envelope Amount

20. Grinding Your Sound

• Oscillator Sync
• Oscillator Sync and Mod Envelope
• Oscillator Sync and LFO

21. Cutting Lows and Highs

• High Pass Filter
• Band Pass Filter
• All Filter Types
• Filter Types and Resonance

22. Making Your Sound Metallic

• FM
• FM Tuning
• FM Amount and Tuning
• FM and Mod Envelope

23. Noise

• Layering Noises

24. Highs and Lows Over Time

• High Pass Filter Envelope
• Band Pass Filter Envelope
• All Filter Envelope Types

25. Dirtying Up Your Sound

• Distortion
• Distortion and Oscillators
• Distortion Filter Envelopes

26. A Different Kind of Metallic

• Ring Mod
• Ring Mod and Waveforms

27. Trippy Swirl

• Phaser Mix
• Phaser Feedback
• Phaser Mix and Feedback

28. Repeating with More Control

• LFO Trigger
• LFO in Poly Mode

29. The Mod Wheel

• Mod Wheel and Cuttof
• Mod Wheel and Resonance
• Mod Wheel an LFO Amount
• Mod Wheel and LFO Rate

30. Balancing Brightness

• Key Tracking
• Key Tracking and Filter Type
• Key Tracking and Self-Oscillation

31. How Hard You Hit The Key

• Velocity and Volume
• Velocity and Cutoff
• Velocity and Filter Envelope

32. The Pitch Wheel

• Pitch Bend Range

The synthesizer lesson packs have one additional video from each section followed by videos specific to the synthesizer. This would be a good model for the Zyn-Fusion manual. Additionally I think this manual should have tutorials on creating instruments and sound effects. I think Syntorial should have a Zyn-Fusion lesson pack but that would be impossible without a proper Zyn-Fusion user manual.

Why is my attack not slow? I shows little dots moving slowly upwards, but I hear nothing.

I originally written a note in the adoc file, but maybe it's better to make an Issue

Here's the part I'm talking about:

.Section Outline
* Sub Part 1: The oscillator
**  Get the user to navigate to the oscillator view
*** Talk briefly about harmonics and low/high frequency content
*** Get the user to change the shape to saw
**** Talk about waveform shapes
*** Get the user to change the waveform parameter to a classic rising up sawtooth wave
**** Look at the harmonics again
*** Prompt the user to play the sound and make a note about what it sounds like
* Sub Part 2: A Voice
** Prompt the user through the process of creating the same sawtooth on voice 2
*** This should be used to re-enforce the process
** Move to voice parameters
*** Move to frequency parameters
*** Get them to change detune
*** Prompt the user to play
** Ask the user to repeat the process on voice 3 with notes about copy/paste for
    the oscillator

Maybe instead of recreating the whole thing for the third voice, make the user copy/paste the entire 2nd voice and only change detune again? That's a useful technique and I guess 2 times repeating the same thing is enough - I'd be afraid users could get bored and just skip ahead frantically. They still can just read again if they didn't understand it.

From the UserInterface.adoc file:

Documentation Idea
It would be great to have an automated method for generating a cheat-sheet like view for the keybindings like discussed in https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/44581/creating-keyboard-layout-diagrams

I've started a Glossary.adoc file for terminological reference.

However - I guess that should be sorted alphabetically. I have no idea how to achieve that in Asciidoc.

At some point we'll need to customize the look of the manual document to make it match the Zyn-Fusion website and interface to some extent.
https://asciidoctor.org/docs/produce-custom-themes-using-asciidoctor-stylesheet-factory/

I think I'd be able to solve your glossary sorting problem with a python script to parse the glossary adoc file, save each term and sort them. If anyone wanted to add more terms they'd just have to follow the syntax of the terms and run the script. Does that sound acceptable?

I've found a feature called callouts:

https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-syntax-quick-reference/#source-code

I wonder if we could use this for screenshots?
I guess we could reskin it with a custom CSS file to suit our look later.
This could make annotating screenshots much easier and less destructive.

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask this; I have no idea if this is a bug with Ardour, the plugin, my setup, the documentation, or the interface between the chair and the keyboard.

I cannot follow https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/user-manual/blob/master/IntroTutorial-KickDrumSynthesis.adoc because when I double click on ZynAddSubFX to the left, I only get generic controls. The documentation for Ardour seems to be terrible, with few web results, and I don't quite know where to ask about how to do this.

I am using the latest update on Gentoo Linux.

I really wish there was an easy way to play multiple notes at once without needing a physical MIDI connection.

In the Goals.adoc I've created two ideas for a system that could let us create and update screenshots automatically without having to re-shoot them all when the look of Zyn-Fusion changes.

I've asked @fundamental and he said it should be possible to have Zyn-Fusion provide screenshots itself from requested UI elements.

Maybe we could define a protocol to describe what should be screenshoted, maybe even ow it should be anotated and have all that be done automatically.

Then hopefully running one command will update all screenshots in the manual for a new Zyn-Fusion UI look or layout.

I wonder if you've thought about the final distribution platform for this manual.

I personally really like ReadTheDocs for a few reasons - one major being the fact that any documentation there can be easily downloaded in multiple formats. Being able to quickly get a PDF offline version is a huge benefit in my eyes. I tend to read manuals while on the go, on a mobile device, often without Internet access.

For example Kdenlive hosts is manual only on its own site, and getting an offline usable version was beyond my Linux powers. I was unable to mirror that manual, which greatly reduced it's usability for me.

On the other hand - Natron, Zone Minder, Animation Nodes, Godot all host their manuals on ReadTheDocs, and I consider that a great feature and a real boost in learning the software.

https://readthedocs.org

What do you think?

I am wondering how can or should we handle self-linking.

Say we briefly mention Macro Learn in a chapter about user interface - it'd be good to add a reference linking to the chapter devoted to Macro Learn if the user wants to go there.

I think that ideal references would work in two ways:

Provide textual information that the user can process and execute himself ("More in chapter 8.3") and provide a hypertext link that will let him jump there immediately or open the relevant chapter in a new browser tab.

I don't know how can we do this in Asciidoc. Any ideas?

I've found this statement in the Manual.adoc file and I can't figure out what it is for. Can someone enlighten me?