Re: CVS (src & bin) zip'd up for nightlies?

[Clay Leeds]

NOTE: some of the following may be off-topic (not to mention display my 
level(s) of literacy on my sleeve), but might (hopefully) 
prompt/continue discussion about how to improve FOP, its documentation, 
and overall experience (for users *&* potential developers).

I definitely appreciate the votes of confidence, and recognize my 
newbieness in many regards. FWIW, my company implemented CVS for a few 
projects we're working on only a couple of months ago, and I (in spite 
of my CVS-literacy level) have been able to set up a couple of others' 
CVS access as well. Just the same, I consider myself more of a CVS-noob 
than a FOP-noob (although others may cheerfully disagree ;-p). However, 
I set them up (as I am set up as well) using a CVS GUI tool (similar to 
WinCVS). I mention this, because I was asked some time ago by some 
fop-dev folks to "by all means test HEAD on your own system" and let us 
know what happens. Well, I was having problems working with CVS on 
apache.org (one GUI client [MacCVSX] introduced weird/buggy menus, but 
worked--although my confidence was shaken by the weird menu bugs--and I 
never could resolve the problem, while another GUI client 
[MacCVSClientX] wouldn't connect no matter what I tried). Anyway, I've 
resorted to working with the functioning but buggy MacCVSX client. 
FWIW, I haven't been using the command line version because I couldn't 
get that to work remotely either. I could, however, get it to work if I 
download the source to my computer. However, I couldn't figure out how 
to get the snapshot for HEAD (thanks for the tip Andreas!) because I 
was so confused about what to look for (see prev msgs in this thread). 
Believe it or not, FOP (and now Forrest) is what prompted me to start 
using CVS in the first place. My desire to make FOP better has been 
relegated to improving the web site through the submission of [PATCH]s 
(but not really knowing which branch is actually the LIVE/production 
site). This, because my JAVA programming abilities are nascent at best. 
My company started using CVS for in-house projects after I & my mgr 
pushed and pushed. We now have my in-house XSL-FO documents, batch 
scripts, DTDs and Documentation in CVS where anyone (with permissions) 
can access them.

Peter is absolutely correct that my goal here is to make FOP easier 
(and more fun!) to use (and hopefully develop for). Having been a 
teacher in the past who had to write grants to get computer hardware 
and software--and then learn how to fix and maintain them myself with 
no "training"--impressed upon me the importance of having well-written 
documentation. It also helped kindle a desire to make things work 
better. Rather than just wish something would do X, I found that when 
most product developers hear about the X idea, they wonder why it 
wasn't there in the first place. Either that or they tell me why X is a 
dumb idea.

On a side note, now that I've finally downloaded a snapshot of 
fop-1.0Dev, and I'm unable to get it to work (NoClassDefFound errors), 
although I've checked an re-checked my CLASSPATH and LOCALCLASSPATH 
(1.0Dev) variables. 0.20.5 works on the same machine in a sibling 
directory. I've seen mention of problems with builds, and am guessing 
that this is an extension of that problem. I wouldn't mind having 
access to the most recent "stable" build of the "unstable" current 
development version accessible. Perhaps, though, this is exactly the 
kind of overkill Peter is talking about at the end of his POST. I guess 
I'll download an earlier build and test that. (I wonder how many builds 
I'll have to download before I realize the problem really is--or 
isn't--my CLASSPATH)...