Hi, I think I'll just weigh in with a small comment on this issue.
Paulo and Bruno do great work both on the actual library and also in supportive work on the mailing list. Even when the tone of request is not so friendly you get an answer. Of course a friendlier request leads to a friendlier answer, but that's the way it is anywhere. I find that both Paulo and Bruno deal very nicely with the less friendly comments and the occasional outburst of sarcasm is always very entertaining. Nevertheless I feel that the less than friendly style of the problem report should not detract from the problems that the original poster ran into: a) Problems building from source. Yes you need to decompress the downloaded source into a directory called "src". As far as I could see this is not documented in the download and also not clear when you run the ant script. I am not fully sure how easy it would be to add an additional top-level "src" directory to the zip/targz source file, but think it would be worth the effort. It would be even nicer if the source file contained the full structure iText/src/... but that's just icing on the cake. b) Compatibility problems with jdk1.3 This is a more serious problem, because on the iText website it says "requires JDK 1.2" when infact the requirement seems to be "JDK 1.4, but can work with 1.3 if you uncomment these lines". Of course I might be wrong here, I haven't tested that and haven't followed the discussion in too much detail. Still here the website possibly needs to be adjusted to reflect the realities and some info somewhere about 1.3 compatibility would be nice. Both problems are not what I would call showstoppers, since I've run into plenty of projects that are even harder to build and both problems can easily be solved by a simple question on the mailing list. Nevertheless I think that making it easier (or at least documenting how) to build the software would make iText an even better product. This I think should be the primary goal even if it is pointed out in an unfriendly way. Greetings, Mark On Wednesday 29 March 2006 19:33, Alan wrote: > Well put Bill! > > I would add that the earlier denigration of the Mailing List was also quite > galling: to my mind this is the heart and soul of iText - an activity to > which many people (Paulo and Bruno especially) patiently and carefully give > a lot of time for FREE. > > Christopher, given your obvious need, and given that you have figured out > how to do it perhaps you might wish to spend a bit of time and contribute a > document for other users in the same boat... > > AlanK > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill > Ensley > Sent: Thursday, 30 March 2006 4:06 AM > To: 'Christopher Randall'; iText Mail Group > Subject: RE: [iText-questions] Complaint about itext-src-1.4.zip > > You know, I followed this thread this morning with ever increasing > frustration. > > I don't think that I have ever read someone so blatently and rudely > complain About iText on this list and I feel it needs to be addressed. > > Both Bruno and Paulo calmly replied to your post with the answers they > could provide. > > Much nicer than your post soliceted. > > THIS IS FREE SOFTWARE!!! > > There are several THOUSAND members of this list who listen in on the posts > And would be glad to help you come up with a solution if you ask nicely. > > Please keep this in mind if you have further needs of this community. > > Bill Ensley > Bear Printing -- Q: What do you call a blind, deaf-mute, quadraplegic Virginian? A: Trustworthy. My GPG public key is available at: http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~mhall/data/security/MarkHall.asc
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