Hi
I agree with Mark, some of your responses are quite rude. I'm not here to
criticize anyone or give unwanted advice but I think that some feedback will
be positive.
First you have created a great tool. That's why all the people in this list
are using it. I understand that it will be better for you to spend time
working on improving iText than answering "stupid questions". But if I were
you I would ignore them or answer something on the line of "the answer to
your question is available in the FAQ, please take some time to go through
it". Or "it's answered on the book that I wrote. Please help me pay my bills
and support future development of iText by buying the book". But insulting
the person who post the question won't stop those type of questions coming
as anyone with an internet connection knows. You can also add "if you still
don't know how to solve the problem I can certainly help you but you will
have to go through my/our consulting services which are billable at $XXX an
hour".
As you probably know you make yourself a name in the open source by helping
people use your product and growing your users' base. I don't know how you
make a living but I'm sure the most people use your tool and the more easy
it is to use more companies will be interested in paying you to work on the
product.
That being said, I can tell you that:
- Both the book and the javadoc documentation are not the best I've ever
seen. I am very familiar with open source products since I work for a non
for profit where our budget is veeerrrrrrryyyyyyyy limited so I always try
to use free, open source products. But I am usually up and running with any
products very quickly after reading a couple of online tutorials and
the javadoc. I rarely have to resource to any books as it was the case with
iText. I understand that this is mainly to the complexity of the PDF format.
- I know it is really a pain in the ass to work with the PDF format, but I
think I speak for many people here when I said that the main reason we are
using a tool like iText is to be able to not to deal with that but with an
abstraction of it that simplifies our job of generating PDF documents for
our applications. And that is the reason for the existence of iText and
many other APIs. So pointing people to the PDF standard reference (or
however it is called) won't help. We won't go there, we are scared of it, we
probably don't understand a single word after "Introduction". We are happy
that there is a guy like you with the interest, time and BRAINS capable of
creating a product like iText.
So please, don't take this personally. If you find anything positive in this
email great. If not just ignore it, I am not interested in a flame war. I
just hope we can all help make iText a greater better product. Yes I said
all, because although you make 99% of the work, I'm sure that some of
these questions help you find bugs in iText and make you realize that some
things that people request or ask if they are possible to be done with
iText are probably good enhancements/additons for future versions.
Fernando
On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 11:12 AM, 1T3XT info <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wagoner, Mark wrote:
> > Uh, who's being rude? Aren't you also the one who made the comment that
> > another poster's code "makes my eyes hurt"?
>
> Yes, I am. And yes, that code did hurt the eyes, because
> it proved that the poster had done no effort whatsoever
> to read some documentation before starting to code.
>
> > It appears this list is little more than an effort to promote the book.
>
> The mailing list archives prove you wrong.
>
> > Most replies seem to fall into one of 3 categories:
> >
> > 1. Buy the book
>
> That's the least you can do if you want to use iText.
>
> > 2. You are stupid
>
> Every developer should know some math. In my country it's impossible
> to graduate in Computer Sciences if you didn't study any algebra.
>
> > 3. Don't bother me with your stupid questions
>
> Yes, you are absolutely right.
> There is too much noise on this list caused by people
> who ask questions that have been answered over and over
> again. Do you know how these people could be educated?
> Because referring people to "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
> doesn't help:
> http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
> Nor does being rude apparently.
>
> > You are not obligated to respond if you do not want to "give away free
> > consultancy". This isn't much of a concern on other open source mailing
> > lists such as Netbean and Tomcat. The general consensus there is to
> > help, not berate.
>
> Er... there are paid consultants answering questions on
> NetBeans (SUN) and Tomcat (Apache). 1T3XT doesn't have
> the money to pay consultants to answer questions for free.
> That's why people should consult the documentation first.
> --
> This answer is provided by 1T3XT BVBA
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008.
> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
> _______________________________________________
> iText-questions mailing list
> iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions
>
> Do you like iText?
> Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php
> Or leave a tip: https://tipit.to/itexttipjar
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
iText-questions mailing list
iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions
Do you like iText?
Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php
Or leave a tip: https://tipit.to/itexttipjar
