David I seem to have hit a sore spot. That was not my intent and I apologize. I will limit my response to a few comments. First, I have read EVERY document I can get my hands on concerning Ofbiz including all the ones in your link below. I even downloaded and printed the more informative ones which I keep for a reference. I for one am most appreciative for their existance. I have watched all your training videos at least twice. I have done all of Si Chens things as well. All were very helpful. However, nowhere in them is the <index> tag mentioned and I am betting many other equally cool features.
Which brings me to point two. Not everyone functions as you do reading xsds and such. Furthermore, not every element choice in an XSD is obvious in its use and their existance is not a good substitute for notes from the author. I personally like to have references I can look at. However, I understand that not everyone works like me so I comment my code as well. I did not suggest that documention should be required from submitters. What I said was "It is a simple matter to request ...". Right now there are submission guidelines that cover such things as code formatting. It is not "required". It sez that your code is more likely to be adopted if you follow these guidelines. The same thing could be said for documentation. As for saying that I would rather the <index> feature did not exist, the answer is that it did not exist for me till I found out about it when Adrian so kindly pointed it out. "And where do you see yourself in this picture Skip?" I had hoped that was obvious. I have contributed lots of code to date and will will continue to make contributions knowing full well that the majority will never be adopted. I expect that is more than most. I will continue to do so over the coming years as I am committed to several Ofbiz projects. It is true that I dropped off the dev mailing list, but that does not mean that I am not willing to help if asked. I just got tired of the hassle and felt my time was better spent writting the code myself instead of debating it. Skip -----Original Message----- From: David E Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 2:35 PM To: user@ofbiz.apache.org Subject: Re: Entity engine, "many" relations, foreign keys On Dec 4, 2007, at 3:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Ah well, "undocumented" is probably not the right word given that we > all > have the source. Perhaps "hidden" might be better? But no, that > would > imply the intent to hide something which is surely not the case. > Perhaps > "unpublished"? > > This is all tongue-in-cheek David. My point is that here is a > really cool > feature that went un-noticed by me after looking through all the > documentation and a substantial part of the source code, including the > documentation in the link you provided. Someone added this feature, > apparently a couple of years ago, but did not take the 5 minutes to > note its > existance. You think that's all it takes? Then why don't you do it? ;) > It is a simple matter to request that submitters provide at least > minimal > documentation for new features that the committers can then include > in the > base documentation, especially in the entity and widget and other > "engines". I'm pushing 80 hours a week trying to stay on top of earning a living and doing what little I can to keep OFBiz moving. Why should I also take on the responsibility of speculatively training every possible user? Oh wait, I did that, but in order to afford my own over-encumbered time it is only available for a charge, and yes this and much more information is in it, hence this link: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/Framework+Introduction+Videos+and+Diag rams Follow the link to the more complete package, that's just an introduction. > There is no value in any software if the implementer has to spend > countless > hours experimenting and digging through source code to implement > some new > feature, fun as such an exercise may be. Oh yeah, then why does OFBiz exist with NO central organization that sponsors it and pays people to work on it? Why do so many people use it in spite of this fatal weakness? > And who sez that "Documented features are somewhat the exception, > not the > norm." in open source software. I can point you to scads of open > source > software with excellent documention, and some of it used by Ofbiz > itself > (ftl and tomcat come instantly to mind). Did I say that was the norm for open source software? Again to paraphrase Johnny Depp in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: "you're funny". > Also, have an overview look at the most successful open soure > projects. All > (that I know of) are very well documented. The success of any open > source > project is determined by its committers and the quality of their > code. The > more committers, the more successful the project becomes. You get > more > committers with good documentation. Wouldn't that be nice! I may have a jaded view, but I think marketing and such have a stronger effect when it comes to mass adoption. I really agree though that more committers and good code quality are important for a community-driven project. This might seem funny, but I don't agree that good documentation attracts more committers. If people can stay distanced from the project and be only a consumer and not a collaborator, many will just do that and not see the value in learning more about the software or contributing to it. > This is not so say that Ofbiz documentation is bad. It's just not > as good > (read that complete) as it could be with a few policy changes. Policy changes? You mean don't accept contributions without full documentation? No thanks, I'd like OFBiz contributions to increase, not decrease. Are you saying you'd rather this feature did NOT exist, than to exist with documentation that doesn't meet your standards? BTW, my opinion on docs: forget them, they are slow and in efficient, I want to look at the XSD file and see what exists as it's way faster and usually my XML editor looks up the options and their in-line docs for me. And where do you see yourself in this picture Skip? A critic and user who is outside the community and can help most effectively by complaining? Something else? How do the people behave who are contributor-users of OFBiz, ie the ones that have created all the stuff you are complaining about? If I had $50 million in the bank and wanted to create something like you are dreaming about then maybe it would exist... but it's not that way... I'm just a broke programmer and business analyst working with others to create something that is cool and useful for all of us involved, and as unencumbered as possible so that it remains that way and makes a difference in the world. Nothing personal about you, BTW, lots of people misunderstand what a community-driven software project means. I think it's mostly because of the mountains of manure that "open source" companies push on the world, ie the ones with traditionally developed products that are partially open source (dual-licensed, etc, etc) for the sake of marketing. -David
