--- James Musick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> skrev: > >But the responsability isn't just with the active > >developers, but with the community - ie including > the > >users themselves. > > I absolutely agree, and wasn't trying to > "complain" in my original post > (sorry if it came across that way).
Not at all. I didn't find your post offensive - rather cautious and suggestions in a good spirit. That I'm a bit annoyed certainly wasn't from your post. > Rather what I > have found to be > frustrating is that it seems like there is so much > potential with DynAPI, > and so many questions that are asked on this > list(and sometimes answered), > that don't make it into even a simple FAQ. But of > course that would mean > that someone would have to do that...and I know it's > work that is a pain to > take care of. Pascal (Bestebroer - previously a very active developer of DynAPI 2) used to maintain the FAQ and tutorials that still exists at the DynAPI 2 DocCenter web. It still stands as about the best resources into learning DynAPI beside www.richardinfo.com and the 6 part columns featured on ZDnet. But sure, to some part, all these resources have become dated and that's because Pascal (as well as others) have become less activly involved in the DynAPI 2, and not really had any new breed appear, step in and taking up on it... > The developers (and community) certainly can't > write people's scripts for > them, or even debug the ones they have...but certain > things to help people > get going really help get enough people going to get > the community large > enough so that it can be self-sustaining. Yes, but OTOH, developers can only do so much. The project grew much faster than new breeds of developers stepped in and filled up. Instead the project suffered from drop-offs of active developers. I can moarn myself not getting further into the active development, but still feel that neither me or anybody else should've expected anything more. After all I added my small pieces. The devise always were and still are: "If something isn't there, first look to yourself and what you can do about it yourself. Next you might suggest it to the project. BUT don't ever, ever expect something to be done for you by someone within a certain time. It might OR it might not be done if time is given, but there are no schemes for anything exactly." > www.richardinfo.com is a great example of a place > where a lot of examples > live, and that makes a huge difference (at least it > has for me). > But what has been tough is not being able to find > some fairly simple > information in FAQ's or in groups....which led me to > believe that perhaps > updating/adding to the FAQ/Tutorials would be > good...but I don't know who > does that. FAQ's are - as you probably know - regular's of forums and emaillists. Searching the DynAPI emaillists should most probably give you the same answers as an updated FAQ. Sure its not as easy access, but its up to anyone really to do the "dirty work" of searching it out and edit it to fit as an FAQ. As of now there are no self-appointed caretaker of this, so its open for anyone to pick it up, or everybody will have to go the tedious way of repeating the search for the information. But its nobody in praticular's responsabiliy. Tutorial's can be so varied, that there's no rules, thumbrules or much anything for what tuorials should be, or how to write them. There's probably a nedd for most anything of this kind, so anybody up for the task could just take of without anything but some knowledge of how DynAPI works. > I'm not in a position where I'm running a business > and want to "pay > someone to write docs" :) A lot of people more or less have the idea that Open Source means totally free (of pay) alternatives of commercialistic values and products in the software industry. Even though companies like Red Hat are anything but non-commercial. I know, because I used to belong to the idelistists that belived in that. Not running a buisness myself I can only sympathise with you. But as the world still revolves a lot about money, "cold cash" stands as what can motivate and make it possible that the person with the intellectual skills and knowledge will provide it to someone who is "by contract" not going to be giving something else back in return - at least not straight off. > And don't feel like I'm > entitled to things...I > just figured that it was worth sending off an email > to see what other people > felt about this open source community. Like is it > 'growing & thriving', or > is it kind of decaying. Because it's not likely to > be static....so it's > going one way or another. > I don't think you're doing anything wrong. The thing is that you should be aware of the perspective in where this comes. Having monitored and (as I'm proud to say) contributed some small pieces to the community during the past 2,5 years, I thought I'd share my experience and view of the current state of the project in relation to its past. > >but that the community spirit became less and less > encouraging > >for anybody to care much for offering anything > more. > > Yah. That's probably the case. I guess it just > takes an influx of people > with energy to keep things going. > Oh well...I just wanted to see what people were > thinking. > > Cheers, > James > I wouldn't want to take that spirit away from you. Just feeding you - and others with less history with the DynAPI project/community - why things are like they're at, so you'll (hopefully) not get hopes to high and fall flat when response is low. Lower activity have been the trend recently, though it may as well just be a matter of summer luring people away from the computerrelated stuff, and them going away from work - where most actually keep updated and active with the community - to go on vacation. In short: Things are rather slow at the moment. Active developers don't seem to be so active - at least not for the moment. Documentation and guidance though, haven't been up to pace with the rest of the project since Dan's 1:st DynAPI lib and site. However its not much anything saying there can't be a revival on one or more parts of the DynAPI project. I'll stay on supporting the project, though I'm dabbeling myself with the question of what Javascript and client-side scriptings role will be in the future of the web, with XML, XSL and webapplications being the steps W3C trying to steer us onto. Also, I'm not developing webpages at the moment. Most of the current state of webdesign annoys me (like 4.x browsers still limits the way it can be done, tables and other "oldfashioned" design-objects etc), and I'm still too fresh with the new techniques - bridging (XHTML) as well as frontier ones. Anywayz, I've got the feeling that others may have the same issues I have; "how to move on from here?", "how can I make use of what i know?". That may actually be a reason that people feel less inspired to engage time in DynAPI. I'm merely speculating though... Henrik Våglin [ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] _____________________________________________________ Gratis e-mail resten av livet på www.yahoo.se/mail Busenkelt! ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: OSDN - Tired of that same old cell phone? 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