> promote your favorite browser. etc.    I think many 
> developers, when not restrained by need to sell the 
> product, are fearful of being preceived as stupid if they 
> make things too easy or clear.  What is so hard as "what" 
> "why? when to use? Recommendations?" "examples?"?

I don't know if I'd say that necessarily.  In my experience,
documentation gets little attention simply because coding is
a heck of a lot more fun.  It's BORING documenting things,
especially if you're not documenting the kinds of things that
can be automagically extracted from source-code comments.
Documentation tends to get put off until the very end, where
it becomes a huge undertaking to finish, and there's all
these cool new features you want to add to the program, so
guess what gets done.  :)

SO, if you're unhappy with the current state of documentation,
really the best thing to do is just start doing the documentation
yourself.  I admit that that's certainly not something you want
to be asking new users to do, and it *is* something of a burden
to document programs you've just downloaded to use, but think
of it as sort of the price you pay for open-source, free software.
You're not paying licenses, you don't have a "broken" product until
you send someone money, but the real price comes into actually
giving something back to the community.

And documentation is often the most sorely needed component of
many open-source projects . . .

-CJ

WOW: Rapacious           | A priest advised Voltaire on his death bed to
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]     |              is no time to make new enemies."

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