David, I was trying to improve the documentation incrementally...
In effect, I was taking the existing documentation and improving it by digesting and understanding the material, filling the holes and presenting it in a flow suitable for learning. The problem I had was getting the answers to fill the holes! With the framework intro videos, you have provided a path to guide new users through learning ofbiz. Paths are very important to new users. With the book, I was trying to provide a path also, but with more detail and it could also have been used as a reference. The videos aren't very useful as a reference, and the existing documentation is too scattered (especially without the path). Maybe there should be a mailing list dedicated to the documentation effort. That way people like me could compile the documentation by asking questions, and people who know the answers could pop in to answer them? Cheers, Chris On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 00:38 -0600, David E. Jones wrote: > Christopher, > > It's really great to see people interested in working on > documentation, especially interested enough to actually put something > together like this. > > I'd like to make a small suggestion, for you and for anyone else > interested in a documentation effort: just as with source code, the > most effective way to work on documentation is to start with what > exists and work on improving it incrementally. There is a lot of > documentation on the docs.ofbiz.org site, and room for many thousands > of hours of work to improve and flesh out that documentation. > > The great thing about helping with incremental improvements on > existing documents (even if the incremental improvement means a > reorganization or refacturing or the like; though that is obviously > dangerous when just starting out) is that your efforts become part of > something bigger, and with enough people doing this eventually the > combined effort will result in something great. > > -David > > > On Apr 10, 2007, at 11:42 PM, Christopher Snow wrote: > > > For the past few months, I have been trying to put together some > > technical documentation on ofbiz. I wanted the book to be detailed > > and accurate, but I have found it difficult to get answers to a lot > > of my questions on the mailing lists. I have found the whole > > process very tiring, and wasteful of time as I am having to spend a > > lot of effort working things out by looking through code. Maybe > > my emails are too rude? Maybe the mailing lists aren't working > > (what about lists for tech-user, functional-user, dev, docs)? > > > > Eclipse BIRT have got it right. They have provided an excellent > > users manual (field guide) and an excellent developers guide > > (integrating and extending BIRT). That really ramps up your > > knowledge of BIRT before looking at the code. With ofbiz, I've had > > to pretty much dive straight into the code (and spend time weaving > > my way through classpath loaders, container loaders, etc, before > > getting to find what I needed). > > > > Anyway, I've uploaded my scribbles if anyone finds it useful but an > > awful lot of work is needed to finish it off. > > > > > http://docs.ofbiz.org/download/attachments/1218/ofbiz_tech.pdf > > > > See you in a few months ... > > > > -- > > This message has been scanned for viruses and > > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is > > believed to be clean. > > >
