I agree with Maurice but also agree with Mike. I think in addition to cleaning up and simplifying what exists, a good deal of the focus for 2.0 should be documentation. User docs are great but improvments in the JavaDocs also need to be made. I'd grade the WW javadocs a B-/C+ because they're mostly alright but definitely lacking in some key classes. (As a comparison, the JDK source code gets an A+ in my book and and F is no comments at all or very little.) I've been using WW a lot lately and the lack of thorough comments is frustrating.

I would be happy to contribute to this aspect. Any suggestions as to how to start? I'm not a committer so I assume for now I should submit some patches?

Regards,
--Bill

Mike Cannon-Brookes wrote:
Here here (hear hear?)

Although - I might say that I think 'lack of doco' is probably more to blame
than power use features. :)

-mike

On 4/11/02 4:20 PM, "Maurice C. Parker" ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
penned the words:


On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 09:28 PM, Francisco Hernandez wrote:


I found this in my bookmarks today, maybe you can use some of it or
contact
its author and collaborate?
http://enigmastation.com/~joeo/webwork.html
I'd never seen this doc before.  I just wanted to comment on a sentence
in the "Editorial" section.

<quote>
Their mentality is why this document needed to be written: their
attitude is that "if we build it, the people who want to use it can put
in the time to learn how to use it," ...
</quote>

Joseph's assumption that we think people need to invest time in
learning WebWork is the exact opposite of true.  One of the founding
principals of the project is that WebWork is supposed to be easy to
use.  You shouldn't have to spend a lot of time either reading the
source code or reading boring documentation.  The project is supposed
easy for the beginner to use and flexible enough for complicated
applications.

The fact that new users don't understand that this project is about
ease of use and simplicity is indicative of where we have gone wrong
recently.  I think we have gotten off track and need to get back on.
For example, this is the reason you sometimes hear me tell people "no"
to new features.  Anything that clutters up the framework, is something
that new users have to learn about.  Take a look at the
webwork.properties file, and you will see where we could have done
better.  There are so many configuration options that I wouldn't expect
an OpenSymphony developer to understand it all.  Cleaning that thing up
is what I want for 2.0.  Not more damned poweruser features.

Let's try to focus on usability.  Low defects, easy to use, and simple
to understand.  In the future I would like people to get a better
impression of us than Joseph got.

-Maurice



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