Hey Steve, and everybody on the mailing list, I took a few moments and wrote down my thoughts about documentation and participation. I received a mail from a user and he is frustrated with the complex setup and the lack of documentation. It is perfectly understandable, but still … a few words about that.
(@all: please look that in your reply you include the GPGTools users mailing list. Then others can chime in with their opinion as well. So make sure to "reply all" instead of a simple reply.) Here we go: Frustration I can totally understand your frustration. I went through the same process. It's part of my main motivation why I participate in this project. I couldn't take that such an important program didn't have a proper homepage and was not working on the latest OS. Then I got involved and here I am trying to help you out. :) We take all criticism very seriously and what you write is true. Not too long ago the whole project was, imo, much more chaotic and complex to install. We have taken major steps in the right direction. We now have a single entry point for the user (http://www.gpgtools.org/), we have one Installer instead of several projects scattered across the web, making it a lot easier for the user to get this setup correctly. We also have an amazing support platform (http://support.gpgtools.org). We even have a nice screencast covering some of the points which you criticize (http://www.gpgtools.org/screencast.html). But please keep in mind, we do all this in our free spare time. We are now at a state where companies contact us and say how they like GPGTools and that their whole company will be moving from PGP to GPGTools. This is something I didn't even imagine when I started participating in this project. Participation Also, what we said and I won't get tired repeating it: Everybody is welcome to participate. If you think our documentation sucks (and I agree we can improve this *a lot*) feel free to e.g. get a free GitHub account and start working on our wiki (https://github.com/GPGTools/GPGTools/wiki). When we setup the wiki, I thought - oh this will be awesome, this is actually fun to work on, hmm I don't know what markdown is, but I'll eventually figure that out. I thought, people are gonna like this. They'll help us build the best documentation ever and we can all benefit by helping out each other. The truth is: only very few people have contributed to the wiki and only the core team has done so over a longer period of time. At the same time we are trying hard to push the GPGMail beta for Lion out the door. But (and I think most people know this by now) we don't rush and post versions full of bugs. Ok, we do, but we try to correct mistakes asap and also try really hard to avoid mistakes - they still happen, of course. The same goes for our support system on http://support.gpgtools.org. Everybody is welcome to help out others if you have a solution. You don't even have to sign up to reply. Although when you sign up you can have a fancy avatar next to your post. But only the core team replies. I've had contact with many people over the time and some have contributed a small patch on GitHub someone else has worked on describing what certain softwares do in the wiki. All this is VERY helpful. And if we all help a little bit, I'm sure we can make cryptography an amazing experience. So enjoy your upcoming holiday season and if you are bored with your family singing christmas carols under the three, check out our wiki and help improve documentation for this project. I wish you all the very best, stay save, steve P.S.: Lately the mailing list traffic has come to a halt. Is it because you all love the new support system or is something broken and we just don't receive the mails anymore? *puzzled* Am 09.12.2011 um 17:10 schrieb Steve Sands: > Steve, > Thank you for your reply. > > I have figured out how to do basic encryption/decryption now, but really, I'm > just astounded at how hard it is to get a straightforward answer to 'how do I > use this program'. I really don't get it. How hard could it be to put > together a brief manual or video that says, 'BTW guys, you don't fire up this > program, you access the program through the services menu item'...it would be > so easy. > > There are many people who ask the same question over and over on various > websites, an no one seems willing or able to simply put together something > which says 'this is how you do it'... > > Sorry for the frustration...thanks again for the response. > > Best regards, > > Steve > > > > > On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 3:37 AM, Steve <st...@gpgtools.org> wrote: > Hey Steve, > I think you never received any reply to your question. You can download the > sig file for a download and then use GPGServices to verify that file. Simply > double click it. Does that help? > > Best regards, Steve > On behalf of the GPGTools Project > http://support.gpgtools.org > > -- > http://gpgtools.org > > Am 09.09.2011 um 20:53 schrieb Steve Sands: > >> Hi all, >> Really appreciate the work that has gone on to make this, but there doesn't >> seem to be any sort of user manual for those of us who are not wizards. >> I have the program, have the services enabled, and sort of understand how to >> do this, but...I downloaded a Tor program, downloaded the signature, but >> can't figure out how to get GPG to validate the downloaded program using the >> downloaded signature. Any help would be greatly appreciated. >> >> Best regards, >> >> Steve >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> gpgtools-users mailing list >> gpgtools-users@lists.gpgtools.org >> FAQ: http://www.gpgtools.org/faq.html >> Changes: http://lists.gpgtools.org/mailman/listinfo/gpgtools-users >> Unsubscribe: >> http://lists.gpgtools.org/mailman/options/gpgtools-users/steveb...@gulli.com?unsub=Unsubscribe&unsubconfirm=1 >> >> This email sent to: steveb...@gulli.com > >
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