A confused Network Admin

[Gerry Creager n5jxs]

<This Is Not A Rant>

As a follow-up on this... I recall a recent JavaDoc comment.  My
students are required to document in-line, and they're using JavaDoc.
If the documentation reviews aren't satisfactory to me, they have to go
add documentation.  It's got to be possible to go generate a mor
compreensive documents from the in-line docs if someone is going to
follow behind and perform that more comprehensive documentation.

That said, I'm reasonably satisfied with the Mapserver documentation,
considering that I consider that to encompass the printed docs, the
Wiki, the archives of this list, and the almost real-time help I can get
when I'm (so easily) confused.

</This Is Not A Rant>

Gerry

Paul Spencer wrote:
> This is a personal gripe and is not directed at Christine - she just got
> me started thinking about it :)
>
> There is some confusion here in assuming that Open Source = FREE.  It
> doesn't mean that at all.
>
> For those of you that like to be able to call up Tech Support, I doubt
> that you got the product for free in the first place and that's where
> part of your money goes ... paying for Tech Support and Documentation.
>
> For the MapServer community in general, if you want better
> documentation, it has to be paid for either by contributing time writing
> the documentation or financially supporting those who can write the
> documentation.  Its not going to write itself.  If you aren't prepared
> to contribute then I guess you don't really have a problem.
>
> Paul
>
> Lisi, Christine wrote:
>
>> Marco - I couldn't have put it better myself.  The best OpenSource
>> documentation of the four I have dealt with in the last 2 weeks came
>> with PHP; twenty-three pages of step-by-step instructions, and they
>> didn't forget about Windows users.  I agree that this listserver
>> wouldn't be nearly as busy if the documentation on the OpenSource
>> products was more complete and precise, and I also wish there was more
>> of a collaborative effort between the programmers when releasing new
>> versions.
>>
>> All I can say is, thank goodness for this listserver because I could
>> have never gotten through this with documentation alone.
>>
>> Christine Lisi
>> Application Specialist
>>
>> Management Information Systems * City of Delray Beach * 100 NW First
>> Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33444
>>
>> Phone, 561-243-7142 * Fax, 561-243-7166 * eMail, Lisi at MyDelrayBeach.com
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
>> Behalf Of Marco Marsella
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 1:07 PM
>> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] A confused Network Admin
>>
>> I would like to reassure Christine that she's not the only one confused
>> about OpenSource in general and MapServer in particular. I have over 25
>> years of professional programming experience in too many languages,
>> starting with FORTRAN IV when some of the listers here where probably
>> not even able to read yet ;-)
>>
>> I find myself also *very* confused because of the terribly poor
>> documentation that usually complements OpenSource projects. Most often
>> than not, there is just a very technical document that tersely explains
>> what you can do with this or that parameter. With most Java projects
>> you just find the JavaDoc! There is little or no high-level
>> documentation that explains the architecture and lets you find your way
>> around. Most of the projects require that you spend an inordinate
>> amount of time looking at the code to understand what you can do and
>> how.
>>
>> For me, I find the MapServer documentation absolutely insufficient and
>> it is amazing how people prefer to spend a lot of time replying on this
>> list rather than investing much more efficiently their time writing
>> decent documentation and providing good tutorials and examples.
>>
>> Please, do not misunderstand me! I think MapServer is a terrific
>> project and I am incredibly grateful to the very knowledgeable guys out
>> there willing to help through the list. Only, I would much prefer
>> having good documentation to work through and bother the listers only
>> when absolutely necessary.
>>
>> As you may have seen, I put my.. time where the mouth is. As soon as I
>> learn how to do something, I will post a message to the list hoping
>> that it might be of help to others (see "[UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] A
>> simple... sample!" dated 10 Feb 2005). Sure, it is a trivial example,
>> but it took me *a lot* of time (and a zillion Google searches) to
>> figure out, much longer than I would expect! I will be more than happy
>> to continue doing so to alleviate the trouble of learning MapServer!
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Marco
>>
>>
>
> --
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Applications & Software Development                              |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+

--
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
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