(Somebody) wrote: > As you have figured out by now, even though I've been > programming for 40 years I am a rank amateur when it comes > to most of the technologies involved with iText.
No, I didn't figure that out, I usually don't look at the names of the people that post questions on the mailing list. Think of a doctor: sometimes people are embarrassed to take of their clothes in front of a doctor, but they don't realize the doctor sees naked people all day. He doesn't notice their nakedness anymore. The same goes more or less for me: people are sending me mails all day (on the list and privately). It is very difficult for me to remember who's who; and I don't always remember their background, or what they have asked before. > This includes web programming, mailing lists, news groups, java, > etc. I am new to all of this stuff and I am not what you > would call a quick study. > > On the plus side, I have a very serious interest in using > iText (particularly iTextSharp) as a core piece of the > programs that I am writing. > > In this light I have a couple of requests: > > 1 - I submitted a few questions a couple of weeks that got > processed in the expected manner. I then posted one last > week that was pretty important to my programming effort and > all I got back was a message that my question awaits > moderator approval. That was on 1/24. So far the question > has not appeared on the list nor have I gotten a message > that the moderator did not approve it. This has created a > great state of confusion for me due to my lack of any deep > understanding about how these lists work. I would appreciate > it if you could clarify for me how to properly submit > questions to the iText-Questions list. If you are subscribed, mails go through automatically. If you are not subscribed, some of the mails are discarded automatically by the system. For instance: if a mail was sent from a mail address that has been used to send SPAM. The original poster doesn't get any notice. Note that I am aware of the fact that SPAM is sometimes sent from an e-mail address without the owner of that address knowing his address was (ab)used. Other mails are forwarded to the list manually. If the subject line doesn't look like an iText question (for instance: if there's a reference to pills, or if it just has 'question' or 'urgent' in the Subject), there is a high risk that the question is thrown away without reading, and without further notice. If the subject line sounds interesting, we have a look at the content of the mail, and then decide what to do. I don't remember your mail from January 24. If it was a valid question, it may have been discarded by mistake. Just like there are some SPAM mails that make it through to the mailing list very occasionally. When we were at JavaPolis, such a mail passed and neither Paulo nor I knew how that happened: we are the only ones able to approve mails, and we hadn't been on line while the mail was accepted. The mailing list is a free service offered by SourceForge. It's good, but it has its flaws. Very often I see mails appear on GMANE (through USENET), that haven't reached my INBOX. I don't know if it's because of the mailing list, my SPAM filter, or something else. Sometimes I get mails a week after they were sent. > 2 - (This is kind of general) I know that you and Paolo must > be very busy. On the other hand you obviously have a great > interest in promulgating open source tools that leverage the > PDF format, otherwise you wouldn't have posted the package > or written the book (which I have purchased). Yes, but sometimes people try taking advantage of us by letting us do their work for free. Also you don't have any idea of the amount of rubbish that is sent to us; certainly in my case, this is causing stress I never asked for. Therefore you'll have to live with my moods. Sorry. > I notice that from time to time, questions appear on the > list from people like me whose understanding of subjects > like PDF, web, iText, etc. are all minuscule compared to > your own. What most of us need, who are in this situation, > is an example that gets at the heart of the question, so > that we can learn by example. Honestly. I really don't understand what you mean by this. There are plenty of iText examples on the net. I wonder what I am doing wrong. Am I hiding them? Am I making it impossible for people to find these examples? I really don't understand what you mean when you say you need "An example that gets at the heart of the question." What on earth is wrong with the examples that are in the tutorial, and that come with the book? Also when I say something is impossible, sometimes people don't believe me. For instance: if I say you can't reflow the content of a PDF file. That's a fact, but people don't always accept that... > It's clear that questions like > this are irritating to you at times because of the terse > (one word) replies that are posted to some questions. > > If your intention is to make use feel frustrated and > incompetent, you are succeeding. I don't intend anything. I'm just airing my own frustration. I know I probably shouldn't do that (I have a book to sell; it's not the best commercial move to show frustration), but I AM ONLY HUMAN. > If your intention is to > promote the adoption and diffusion of iText, it might be > better, although more time consuming, to post replies that > were more informative and less condescending. Who is going to pay for that? Writing a book is not a lucrative job. It took 3 months of preparation, then I worked half time for 6 months to write it. Then I spent 9 months getting it ready for production. In other words: I have worked for 18 months with the loss of 1/4 of a year of salary, and in return I was payed an advance of only $4,000. If the book is a success, I'll have more than $4,000, that's true, but still: it's not something you should do if you want to get rich. There was a lot of idealism involved. > I have also discovered that the way the archive of list > items is handled on sourceforge and gmane, it is very > difficult to locate old messages that are relevant to a > question that I might have. That's why there are links to plenty of other archives. I always switch between Nabble and GMANE if I need an old answer. > It might be useful to establish another list, to which only > you post, that consists of messages and replies that contain > good examples of how the basics of iText work. I have spent an enormous amount of time providing http://itext.ugent.be/itext-in-action/ where you can find ALL THE EXAMPLES that are in the book, ordered in the way they appear in the book. Do you have any idea how much time it took to build that site??? At the bottom of each chapter page I am adding bonus examples on a very regular basis. Last week I wrote three variations of tooltip examples because there was a question on the 'iText in Action' forum about tooltips on the Manning site. These examples can be found on the page of Chapter 15. I HONESTLY don't understand people saying they have bought the book, and at the same time that there are no good examples that show the basics of iText. I'd really like to know what kind of examples they need. Writing examples (even if they are only 1 page long) is an enormous work. I remember a mailing list subscriber that posted such an example as feedback after a long conversation that went back and forth several times. I even remember that I wasn't too friendly when his question first popped up, but I helped him anyway, and my gratitude when he posted his 'Proof of Concept' was genuine. We had been working on this example for over a week!!! > Access to > such material would undoubtedly reduce the number of > irritating, simple-minded questions. I limited the access to the examples on itext.ugent.be because I was asked to. Nevertheless I made sure everybody who wants to, can link to one of those examples without needing a password, so that the book examples can be used to answer questions. > I hope that I have not offended you. I sincerely appreciate > the work that you have done and am trying to make the most > of it. Mails like this do hurt, because I'm trying to do my best; and I'm trying to do it for free. If you don't count the 50 bucks you have to pay for the book, but that's peanuts compared to what you usually have to pay for software. If you have sent this mail because you think we ignored your mail to the mailing list: I'm sorry, but sometimes mails get lost for the reasons described above. Sometimes mails get through and remain unanswered without reason. For instance: in the morning I have a handful of 'Compose mail' windows open because I am answering different mails at the same time, but then I get a phone call, I have to go to a meeting, and I close my PC thinking I have hit the 'Send' button, without actually sending the mail. Stuff like that happens. If a mail doesn't get through the first time, post it again a few days later. In all those years, I only banned 1 person from this list, because we had answered his same question over and over again, yet he continued posting it. I considered this person to be a SPAMmer: people sending SPAM don't care if 9,999 mails remain unanswered, as long as 1 mail gets an answer, they win. I can't have that. If you have sent this mail because you think I have the wrong attitude, you may have a point. If you take a snapshot, it will be very easy to find days where I have acted as a real asshole. On the other hand, you will also find lots of mails where I admit that I was wrong, and where I thank people for finding a bug or a solution I hadn't thought of. You can't blame me for being of flesh and blood. If you have sent this mail because you think there aren't enough examples on how to use iText, I can only answer that this is nonsense. I am replying to you in Bcc: without any reference to your name, but because the content of your mail is very important to me, I forward it to the mailing list. Maybe that's stupid of me, showing emotion in public, ranting like this, but that's my way of getting it out of my system. br, Bruno ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. 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