[OpenLayers-Dev] Polygon overlay

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 4:21 AM, ext Dom Lehr wrote:

> Whatever guys, this was a kind question from my end. You should watch the way to talk to people - it won't get you that far. Get a life!

... The irony of this statement is amusing.

OpenLayers developers are not here to hold your hand. Zac's response -- while
possibly somewhat harsh -- was not really inaccurate: The goal that you want
to achieve was not well-stated, and so calling it 'pointless' is simply a 
literal statement of fact. While perhaps slightly unclear, it isn't entirely
unfair: others are here to help you with your tasks, not to walk you through
how to do them.

In order to receive help from OpenLayers users and developers, the best way
to do it is:
 1.  to fully explore the API, examples, and documentation, to the
     greatest extent you can
 2. To create an example HTML page demonstrating what you want to do
 3. To publish that HTML page
 4. To explain what aspect of the code you have written you are having
    problems with.

(See also: http://docs.openlayers.org/help/minimize.html, which explains 
some of this.)

The way your question is worded, it seems as if you haven't tried to write
any code yet; if you have, you certainly didn't say so, or offer any 
evidence of this that someone trying to help you could see.

There are several situations where users are unable to do this; for example,
many people starting with OpenLayers do not know Javascript, have no 
experience with HTML or CSS, or other similar situations. In those cases,
the effort that a user needs to put forth is greater to achieve #2 above --
but until you do, you should be aware that it is unlikely that you will
get much help from developers, who are here to help with problems, not 
to provide customized examples for every user who has something to do. 
(Keep in mind that there are literally almost 2000 people subscribed to
the OpenLayers mailing lists -- and only probably 5% have enough experience
to answer many of the questions asked on these lists.)

Once you've tried to write some code, explored the API, and created an 
example page -- even if it doesn't work -- sending mail to the users list
is your best way to get help. At this point, I wouldn't expect much: you've
already told everyone reading this list to 'get a life', so you're 
karmically in the hole. (If you don't understand why this might be,
a read through http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html is probably
wise. ESR's writing style is annoying and rude, but the points he makes
are mostly correct, and understanding what's written there will help
go a long way when communicating with any Open Source project.)

Good luck.

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Nokia