Thanks Greg. You're right, much of the organization of the documentation leaves my head spinning. And it's not exactly in terms where one who first approaches the software can just sit and configure and run wild with it. I never came to waste people's time, but I don't know where to look a lot of the time. And sites off of search engines are usually a maze themselves. Many people have been a great and tremendous source of help that allowed me to leave the office and go home before the witching hour on this user list. As well as making the severe headaches this software can provide subside. It's good to know that I have the support of people such as youself. It definitely helps get a good start on learning what I need to move ahead. Thanks. Greg Bullough <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:At 12:22 PM 10/17/02 -0700, Lior Shliechkorn wrote: >Limited knowledge, and often confusion, doesn't attribute to questions >being asked in the same way that you, who have that knowledge, would like >things phrased. I don't need people to gang up on me and tell me that I'm >being "rude and arrogant" in the way I ask things
What Lior has underlined, and what we really should take to heart, is the manner in which the Open Source movement is occasionally its own worst enemy. Let's face it...the documentation is often nonexistent, out of date, or generally awful. Tomcat is a beautiful thing...with ugly docs that merit the forgoing criticisms. Now to be fair, I can't blame anyone for not writing docs for free. After all, one of the FEW ways to make money in Open Source is to write for O'Reilly or Que or whomever. But of course you can't do that when the target is moving really really fast. Or not effectively anyway. I also can't blame them because *I* haven't done it, and so I don't get to bitch too loud :-) And some fine folks already have exceeded the call of duty by giving us, I say GIVING us Tomcat! But look at where the jakarta.apache.com points us to for FAQs...jguru.com, which is a for-pay site! That's just a bad strategy, when there are so many nice FAQ hosting packages available under the CopyLeft. Dumb little things, like 'don't use the RPMs,' the explanation which a couple of guys here gave me for my teething troubles, can consume a lot of time. They ate a day of mine. I admit, I hesitated about posting what seemed to me to be a dumb question here, for fear of getting into a flame-war when someone might say 'RTFM.' The alternatives, like Cold Fusion, have kick-ass documentation, both with the server and written by a few supporters of the platform. The reason that CF has been so successful...and is apt to fail now...is because it early on gave software developers what they wanted to build things quickly, easily, and in a way they could make a good living. Since Macromedia is falling down on that 'give the developers what they want' measure, there's an opportunity for the combination of Tomcat and the Jakarta classes/tags to sieze a big chunk of that following. This stuff *is* kind of hard to get going on. Without well-organize docs, it's REALLY hard. When the next thing is that someone slaps you around for asking what they regard as a 'dumb' question, well it doesn't do much for the proliferation of the platform. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: For additional commands, e-mail: --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos, & more faith.yahoo.com
