[OpenLayers-Users] slimming OL

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 02:01:44PM -0600, P Kishor wrote:
> Oh, Chris. My apologies for not responding specifically to your
> detailed note. I didn't respond because it was so complete, with
> detailed explanation. With respect to explaining the dependencies in
> OL, it left nothing further to be asked.
> 
> My response to Wendell's post was from the point of view of a user.
> You think like a developer, and that too, developer of a rather
> complex piece of code that you are intimately familiar with. I speak
> as a user of your code. I am not developing OL. I am developing *with*
> OL. Hence, not only my familiarity with its innards is very low, it is
> likely going to remain very low -- my incentive is only in making my
> projects with it, not necessarily making OL itself better, easier
> (although, if I end up doing that, that is gravy).

Understood.

> in other words, my response to Wendell was not a complaint
> about OL, but a comment on its complexity that may prevent me to
> adequately pursue the advice that you gave me in such detail.

The documentation seems clear to me. "Take any class name which you type
'new OpenLayers.Foo in your code, and include that file." Given the
examples in the documentation, I think this is relatively clear; the
lite.cfg (described earlier in the page) provides a reasonable eample as
well. The *only* exception to that in the existing code is Layer.OSM,
which needs to be better documented; excepting that, I'd gladly accept a
request for clarification on the text of the documentation on any point
in which it is unclear.



> Wrt "sniping at documentation," yes, I have done that. Many others
> have as well. We see wondrous things that OL can do, but we are unable
> to replicate them, or, we want to do even more wondrous things, but
> don't know how to proceed. That is when we complain. I know it
> probably sounds horrible to you... "look at these jokers... never
> helped out with a line of code in developing OL, but here they are,
> carping about the docs." 

Carping about the docs is fine when the person looking to solve a
problem is willing to help improve the documentation. I provided a quote
and link to the documentation. You seem to be saying that the
documentation is unclear/confusing. To me, it is not; obviously, I'm a
developer, approaching it from a different perspective. The only way I
can improve the doucmentation is with the help of people who don't
understand the code.

Thus far, your response to my specific documentation provided and
requests has been to ignore them. This is frustrating because I can't
improve the documentation without constructive feedback, and there isn't
any constructive feedback here. (Only a statement that "I'm unwilling to
do this because OL is complex.")

There's many forms of feedback that users can provide. Over and over
again, what I find is that when I try to encourage users to use the
documentation, I'm told that it doesn't cover what they're looking for;
when I point out what the documentation actually covers, users either:
 
 1. Stop responding entirely or
 2. Say "Oh, that is in the documentation, you're right."

The only way it seems to work any better is if I simply stop pointing
users in any direction at all; at least then, users float or sink based
on the quality of the project, and not how helpful I am.

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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