What do you expect for free!?
The included documentation is awesome compared to most open source projects available.
Being free is not really an excuse. I know lots of free programs that include documentation that is completely accessible and understandable by a layman. Those programs, however, are targeted to that type of user. SquirrelMail, on the other hand, is targeted toward systems administrators and other more technological users who are already familiar with the concepts necessary to successfully install and configure this type of software. As such, the documentation is excellent and actually goes into much more detail about the basics than it really needs to (what admin doesn't know or doesn't know how to find out what to do with a .tgz?) If anything, the documentation is too accessible and you end up with users like below who take a look at it, think they can do it, find out they can't and blame the documentation for not meeting their needs even though it probably wasn't written with them in mind.
I think that SM is on the very tip of the iceberg that is an email server; it's the place where would-be system administrators often start, and as such, we get a lot more inexperienced folks through here. As long as you have a preconfigured email system to place SM on top of, I in fact think it *should* be accessible to such people (it mostly is; the installation process is somewhat painless). I tend to agree with the OP that the docs are not easy to follow for the more inexperienced amongst us. That is, of course, the bane of OSS; who wants to spend their precious time writing docs? My hope is that we can continue to improve upon this part of the project, but in the meantime, that's what our mailing lists are for. Hopefully the OP can get together the part that was hard to understand and actually ask a real question instead of pointing fingers.
- Paul
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Corrie Walker Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 11:16 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SM-USERS] Installing SM
The instructions on how to install this program to some one who isnt a programmer are about as clear as mudd.
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