Chris Howe wrote: >There's a funny point in learning OFBiz. You start >out looking at it as this huge monstrosity that's just >too much to figure out and you get frustrated with the >lack of documentation available (even given the sites >linked off of ofbiz.apache.org and the tens of >thousands of mailing list posts available and the >number of video tutorials available). But you start >playing with it a bit, and you pass an "aha" moment. >You don't realize the moment that you pass it but when >you look back and think "how can I make the learning >curve easier for the next guy", you realize everything >was there, and it's difficult to figure out what you >can add to those websites that could make it any >clearer.
A clear roadmap would be most useful so that the essential stuff gets read first. And yes, there are already How to documents, architecture documents, but there is too much to read plus every document starts with a brief resume of OFBiz rather than getting down to the business at hand. Basically it appears that every document has been written to stand alone and therefore feels the need to fill in the back ground on OFBiz. I haven't yet read a great deal of the available documentation, but there is a trend there. Please don't take offence at these comments, they are only intended to help. I also find that there is a lack of structure in the documents in that there tends to be paragraph after paragraph of text which is neither reference nor tutorial. And as I progress along the road to OFBiz heaven I will try to document my path. In the mean time it might be useful to thrash out a style and structure to the whole documentation suite. Heck I know this can be difficult in the open source environment. I would favour a wiki approach to doing documents provided the wiki is restricted to named members to stop spammers wrecking it. In the wiki, users should use a colour, perhaps blue to indicate a question or need for further detail in the flow of the document and the remainder of the contents in black. I am quite willing to start up a tutorial document if you are all willing to contribute to it with David acting as umpire. Kind regards, Andrew Ballantine. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.14/636 - Release Date: 18/01/2007 04:00 ***************************************************************** This email has been checked by the altohiway Mailcontroller Service *****************************************************************
