> Steve, I hope you take this in the tone it was intended
Well, I felt his first question was worded in a way that made it seem that
he didn't know about PrintJob. A quick look in the help panel or google
would have helped him on his way.
This is true for any issue people are having. There is built-in
documentation (which can be lacking, I know), there is google, and there are
the flashcoders archives. All of these resources are available for people
before they ask simple questions on basic actionscript ("How do I duplicate
a movieclip?" would be another RTFM question).
RTFM is not necessarily said with malice or ego. Regardless of the presence
of the F, it's just the accepted acronym as I'm not sure I've ever seen RTM.
I wasn't being malicious in my curt reply. I passed on the important piece
of information (PrintJob) that was needed to focus his search. If I just
said RTFM and that's it, then yeah, I'm a dick. But, I pointed out what the
term he needed to look up was, and that it was in the (freakin) manual.
> Maybe he never realized PrintJob was in the manual
Not directed at Corban specifically here, but that's no excuse for anyone.
Flash comes with searchable documentation. Open the help panel, click on
the search icon, type in "print" and it is easily found. Open google and
search for "printing in flash" and the second result returns a tutorial and
more detailed information. It takes little effort to do some legwork
yourself first. If you come up with zilch after that and you're still
having an issue with your code, post it up to Flashcoders.
In the end, Corban was having a specific issue and when he posted it, I was
able to help him, and happily so. Funnily enough, one of the answers to his
questions (the size issue and the way flash draws pixels) was something I
read on the second link on Google when I did that very search as an example
for him that there was information out there on printing in Flash. And this
is my point. If you take the time to do a little research yourself, you
will learn something a lot faster than if you ask the list and wait for a
response. Again, this is not specific to Corban.
When I wanted to print landscape in portrait using PrintJob, I searched the
Flashcoders archives first and found nothing. Then, I searched the web and
found a solution. Ended up it was extremely wrong and it took me awhile to
figure out why. Now, I understand PrintJob a lot more than I used to
because I was forced to play around with it (and I found out that the class
has some undocumented bugs with printing scaled/rotated clips that require
workarounds). When I figured it all out, I posted my results to Flashcoders
for the specific purpose of having something on the subject in the archives
for those who follow behind me, including linking to what google returned
and why it was wrong, just in case somebody searched for the solution like I
did.
If your intent is to not scare off new coders from asking questions here,
that's fine and good but new coders should also learn how to do their own
research first. It will only benefit them to learn how to be more
resourceful. Have you heard the fable about the computer lab at MIT? It's
been said they have a teddy bear there that you must explain your problem to
in full before you ask the staff member in the lab. The lesson is that
often you will solve your own problem by talking it out first. Google can
be your teddy bear, too.
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