My experience:
I am ebiz consultant, in every my engangement, I did 2/3 of my project with
documentation. And most of them have to be rework, and redone, because bad
content..
I think we cannot say all the TQ guy don't like that. All the TQ and
commiter must start with that, this will give all of us benefit? CVS is not
enough.
Do you ever count how many people email to this mailing list and ask?
My Tomcat is not work with my IIS in W2K??? more than once every week..
See.. this is not an effective, isn't it? because no documentation explain
of this?
are we have to wait the Devshed.com, or someone post in his web site, and no
link from this web site??? It is not a good solution also.
I think, Gomez must create tomcat-doc ASAP.
Frans
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Fernández" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: TOMCAT SUCKS
> Hi Jeff!
>
> "Noll, Jeff HS" wrote:
> > Not to get into a great big argument over OS version commercial
> > products, but if OS projects expect to be taken with the same
consideration
> > as commercial they have to accept to be compared across the board. This
> > includes documentation. You can't just pick and choose the battles you
want
> > to fight.
>
> Yes you can (and should). Do you know why engineers are so bad writers
> of user documentation? Because they are so embedded in the technical
> point of view that it takes a big effort to revert to user mind. That's
> why there are technical writers in the world.
>
> Open Source is about scratching your itches (usually at what you do
> best). I don't want lousy manuals written by overworked engineers --
> that's worse than nothing. But some users have contributed excellent
> guides, although they are not as handy as they should be.
>
> That's the reason why it's so disgusting to hear folks complaining about
> the docs. If you have an itch, you don't ask dad to scratch it any more
> -- you know exactly the sore point. If you're willing to make the docs
> better, I'm sure you'll get all the support you need.
>
> > For the most part, the documentation in OS projects just plain
> > sucks, if it even exists. Believe it or not this is one of the reasons
OS is
> > often frowned upon. Look at Microsoft, sure its close source, people may
> > think it sucks, blah blah blah, but do you have idea how much
information is
> > on MSDN?
>
> On MSDN you don't have access at the internal workings of software,
> reasons behind design choices or bugs that have been corrected and are
> recurrent. In the tomcat-dev archives you can find all of that and much
> more.
>
> On MSDN you cannot speak to the actual engineers that did the job and
> drove the architecture forward. In the tomcat-dev list you can.
>
> > The lack of documentation available goes against some very basic
> > rules of Software Engineering. In the real world does this really
matter? I
> > dunno, but often times packaging and presentation, and a finished looka
nd
> > feel are the key to getting in the door and this is where most OS
projects
> > fail miserably.
>
> Most open source projects fail in lack of commitment from the dev/user
> community. Bad docs are just a consequence of poor user commitment (in
> that field, in others like bug finding we excel).
>
> > Because its free might be the reason the documentation sucks, it
> > shouldn't be a justification. (not that i'm saying tomcat sucks, just
> > argueing the point).
>
> Un saludo,
>
> Alex.
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