-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Robert Osfield wrote: > Hi Tim, > > On Dec 15, 2007 9:20 AM, Tim Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> * We could embark on the much-promised and long-awaited "Programming >>> Guide". Again, this is a big job and only seems worthwhile if we focus our >>> efforts on stable features. >> I'd love to see this and I know it would be a big job. I think you could >> enlist the >> community's help with this and still make as much money with the book at the >> end of the >> day. > > In the past we've tried to encourage community documentation, the > original pmwiki and then the move to Tracs were both motivated by the > hope that they would help such a community effort. Community > documentation efforts have so far tended to be small little pockets of > activity that soon die down as developers move on to go there "day > job" done - basically everybody is really busy almost all the time. True enough. > I think we need to get past the thought that if we just create the > right conditions for the community to contribute documentation then > it'll just happen for anything beyond small stints of couple hours > here and there. If we want good documentation then we need to focus > on how to create the right conditions to enable individuals to commit > the majority of their time for substantive blocks of time. I agree with this, more or less, but I will say that the conditions don't exist yet because there isn't critical mass yet of up-to-date documentation. Where is the documentation fairy? :) > >>> * We could spend time writing short whitepapers on various OSG topics, >>> similar to Don's useful document on reference-counted memory. We could sell >>> these as PDFs for a couple dollars a pop or something, depending on scope. >>> Possible topics would include rendering order with RenderBins, deriving your >>> own Nodes, Drawables, or StateAttributes, platform-specific topics, >>> resolving build and installation issues, using the Geometry class, >>> performance issues, etc etc, the list is essentially endless. >>> >> This route would be quite unfortunate. Like everyone else on this list I'd ... >> I absolutely respect your need to make a living, and the above subjects >> should certainly >> be covered in any book on OSG. I might suggest that you start shells for >> these subjects >> on Wiki pages, either the official OSG one or your own where you make it >> clear that you >> retain a "compilation" copyright. Add what you know to the pages, then later >> use them >> as base material for the book. I don't know the economics of your book >> sales, but I >> can only believe that high-quality free documentation won't hurt the sales >> of a good >> book on OSG. > > Um... you want great documentation for free on the promise that you'll > buy other great documentation... > Uh, no. I don't particularly need the documentation on any of those topics. It would be nice if it existed so that others who don't want to read the source can learn those things, they would be great book chapters, it would suck if the only existent documentation on those subjects wasn't freely available.
> Experience form the QSG is that if there is free and the is paid for > in a hard copy form, free wins almost all the time. > > Even the paid documentation is unlikely to pay for itself in terms of > time put in, so the idea that one can afford the time to write free > documentation as well and still have a viable hourly pay rate is > simply not realistic. Book sales on niche technical books very > rarely exceed the costs of production, we'd need to sell ten's of > thousands of books to start seeing any reasonable return. Exactly. > > So please guys, can be get a dose of realism here. Good documentation > is hard and costly. The community haven't be able to magically write > lots of great documentation, free books won't ever pay there way and > just eat in sales of bought books, and bought books will always be in > the minority and don't pay for themselves. This is the reality as it > stands right now. So why bother with the non-free books? That isn't meant as a leading question. > > The reality is also that the best documentation we have is subsidised, > the QSG by the terrain deformation project, the tutorials from NPS > and the ref guides personally by Paul Martz and Bob Kuehne. In part > the ref guides are loss leaders for Paul's and Bob's OSG Training, by > mostly they are benevolent, a gift of their time and effort and as > such should be cherished. "Loss leader" is not exactly the same as "benevolent," but I basically agree. > > We can't just live off the good will of others, people have to pay > mortgages, put bread on the table. We need to be realistic about how > we create and sustain the conditions that members of the OSG community > can help write documentation. Members of the community have to help > subsidise the effort of writing documentation via funding others time, > or by getting their organizations to put aside blocks of their time > towards so they can help with the effort. > > To me funding of documentation needs to come from individual > contributions and from companies/universities donating money, the > later is what I'd see as being the most viable route. > ... > > So please, any volunteers for time or cash? I promise to write up what I've learned about render bins and the DatabasePager... when I get the time :):):) Tim -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHY8jmeDhWHdXrDRURAiLsAJ9VWaBvdw3vgfFPBeWl8fEsjl6/XwCg3Hkp Bv2eQdMaWRAlGhd2KZfsnR0= =WaJR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
