Hey Chris,
Your concern is appreciated, but frustrated I am not. I'm simply working
through tasks and ticking them off the list in my typical
anally-retentive, OCD kind of way :-/
Yes, Jacopo did tell me where to put the docs. He didn't go through the
procedure in as much detail as you have done here, but I did kind of
understand that already. As I said in my post to David below, I wasn't
looking for any kind of thanks, simply some kind of acknowledgement that
somebody was that the work was now available for further development and
wouldn't be lost in the maelstrom of other activity the community is
currently engaged in.
Just to put the record straight, the process of uploading to the Wiki
took a week certainly, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. No way
I could have finished the whole job in just one week. As I'm sure you
know, the majority of the work had to be done off-line, exporting the
PDFs to txt and png, reformatting the txt into Wiki, putting the images
in the right place etc., etc. Even if it were possible, the sheer
monotony of doing all that in one week would have driven me even more
bonkers than I already am! I actually started way back in January and
have been spending all my spare time on it ever since. I don't like it
when people promise things they can't deliver, and from comments David
has made in previous discussions, it seems that OFBiz has suffered from
way too much of that already. So I didn't announce I was going to do it
until I'd already finished most of the job and was confident I could
finish the rest.
Patience is something I'm happy to say I have aplenty. I have no clients
with any need for OFBiz and therefore no need for any kind of
installation or documentation myself in the foreseeable future. So
there's no urgency from my end on anything.
Just for the record, I'm actually more interested in the development of
the open source movement as a whole than I am in OFBiz per se.
When I first came across OFBiz I picked this up on the ML:
Torsten Schlabach wrote:
Today, at Universities around the world, when you learn what an
operating system is, you use Linux. When you learn what a webserver is,
you use Apache httpd. When you learn what XML, XSLT and the like is all
about, you use Apache Cocoon. When you learn what a J2EE container is
all about, you're likely to use either JBoss or Geronimo. When you learn
what an ERP system is, and you're studying at a western university that
either has enough money or is considered important enough, you will
use SAP.
I just think that it would be a pretty crucial victory for the open
source community to be able to add something like OFBiz to the end of
that list. Whether OFBiz can, or even wants, to get there before any of
the other OS projects competing in the same territory remains to be
seen. All I do know is that I've contributed what I can. Now I've
ticked that off the list, it's time to be moving on.
Best,
Ian
Chris Howe wrote:
Hey Ian,
I can understand your frustration, but Jacopo answered you February
23rd with how the process of having your work replace the current
protected documentation would likely go.
1. Create the ones you're interested in updating in your user account
space (BTW, great work on getting to all of them)
2. The community can then review, add to, clarify, rearrange your work
as needed.
3. Replace the current docs in the protected space with the community
reviewed docs to protect them from being edited by those who may not
understand how things do/will fit together.
You just finished step 1 within the week. I know I personally schedule
things I want to look at in the community project at least a week or
two out (and still am only able to get around to about half of what I
want to look at/contribute to). I can only imagine the timetable for
those that are doing OFBiz professionally would be even more drawn out
than that unless it was a pressing topic. In addition, there are a few
things going on with UI refactoring and AJAX implementations that may
make many of the screens that are documented obsolete or not work in
the same fashion that the docs are describing. This week's hackathon
should show a firmer direction here.
I surely appreciate the work you put into converting those docs over.
I might suggest making a JIRA issue in regards to this so that
discussion can be a bit more collected as interest in reviewing this is
likely to trickle in rather than come in waves. In any event, have a
bit of patience and I'm certain it will work itself out :-)
,Chris
--- Ian McNulty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
David,
I'm getting really confused here.
David E. Jones wrote:
Having a large OOTB end-user community would certainly benefit the
project, in really major ways too. The problem is that the current
contributing community does not have sufficient resources to create
and maintain what would be needed to satisfy this sort of user.
It is generally accepted that one of the main things all OOTB
end-users
need is accessible end-user documentation.
In OFBiz End-User Documentation > OFBiz End User Docs Home > Areas
Being Worked On, David E. Jones wrote:
There is a lot of work to be done on editing and structuring and
reformatting the OFBiz documentation. In short, we need your help!
You can find the PDF exports from the Undersun end-user
documentation
site here
<http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Undersun+Doc+Site+PDF+Exports>.
As far as I can tell, half-completed fragments of various attempts to
translate the Manager Reference PDFs are currently scattered over at
least 6 other locations in the Wiki (for details see my comments at
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Areas+Being+Worked+On ).
There
can be no doubt that most end-users will find this very confusing and
frustrating indeed.
To help address the problem of the lack of resources in the current
contributing community, I decided to commit a considerable amount of
my
own time to answering David's request for help by translating all 12
of
the Manager References in their entirety to Wiki format in one
location.
This work has now been completed. I was not given access to the end
User
Docs space so have put them in my personal Confluence space at
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/Manager+References
I posted news of this on the ML on the 3 March with a request that
they
might now be transferred out of my to the End User Docs space - but
had
absolutely no response whatsoever!
I reposted this request under a new thread again on the 5 March - and
had absolutely no response again!
I understand that most of the core team is currently engaged in the
Developer's Hackathon in Ephraim. But they are still posting here on
a
raft of other issues. What am I to make of what would appear to be
their
complete lack of interest in this one?
BTW. Just to be clear on this, I am not looking for any thanks or
brownie points or engaging in any other kind of attention seeking
whatsoever. I understand that other members of this community have
committed considerably more to this project than I have and that my
contribution is very minor in comparison.
What I am looking for is:
1) some kind of acknowledgement that the translated Manager Reference
PDFs can, at some time in the future, be transferred to a more public
section of the Wiki where they can be more easily accessed by
end-users
and further amended and developed by those more qualified than myself
2) some kind of solution to the cloud of confusion currently existing
in
the user documentation, with half-completed fragments of various
attempts to translate the Manager Reference PDFs currently scattered
over at least 6 other locations in the Wiki.
How unreasonable a request is that?
Ian
David E. Jones wrote:
On Mar 5, 2007, at 6:57 PM, Jonathon -- Improov wrote:
David (Jones),
What about those open source projects that are polished for OOTB
convenience and experience? Even Apache (httpd) and Tomcat (both
under Apache Licence 2.0?) have better OOTB "operational
readiness"
than OFBiz. Ie, they work well OOTB and they have very good and
widely published docs to further fuel explosive rate of community
development. (I understand you believe that approach won't benefit
OFBiz; I don't know so I can't say.)
Yeah, I guess I like Jacopo's point that it would be better to
quite
me than speak for me. In this I don't believe I even said/wrote
anything like that.
Having a large OOTB end-user community would certainly benefit the
project, in really major ways too. The problem is that the current
contributing community does not have sufficient resources to create
and maintain what would be needed to satisfy this sort of user.
Hopefully that will change in the future. In the mean time, the
project is self-sustaining and growing based on use by non-OOTB
users
and contributors (or those that are OOTB users, but just extremely
patient... ;) ).
-David
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