I notice that the documentation for getting started has recently been split in two, one technical the other business. This is excellent and makes it much easier to read.
Reading the Business Setup document I am struck by the way in which it is assumed that the only way to get started is to take the default seed data and modify it, no-where does it describe how to start from scratch. When this is coupled with the discussion about who OfBiz is aiming at, and which bits of what is a very extensive offering are regarded as basic this has the effect that you end up disabling bits that you do not want rather than enabling the bit that you want. This also means that there are things that are configured but about which you (the user) know nothing and for which you have no use. Is the subtext that defining from scratch is so complicated that it should never be attempted. If so perhaps this should be stated. Of 15 pages (when I printed the document) basic company setup talks about how to set up the basic business and occupies just one page, and then about 10 page cover the ecommerce aspects. Tax is only mentioned as an adjunct of the ecommerce section, and the setup of the accounting section is not even mentioned. There is also no mention of localisation. Getting OfBiz to default to other than the Dollar and American style Sales tax (and I am aware of the recent discussion on VAT on this list) is not mentioned, and worse, it is not mentioned that what is being described is a US model. Perhaps a further subdivision is needed. The basic company setup in one document, accounting and localisation issues in a set of documents identified by country (or groups of countries where they do things sufficiently similarly), and then separate documents for the other bits like ecommerce, manufacturing and warehousing. Breaking the documentation up like this may also make it easier to get contributions as the task is less daunting. Just a thought. David
