Hi Vladimir,
I agree with you. We need more information in the HowTos for installing
and using xindice and tomcat. However, I personally like to take things in
two steps. The first step is just to get everything running, sort of like a
completely vanilla out-of-the-box implementation. Then my second step is to
configure all the components the way I like. And the howtos I wrote reflect
this. They are very plain and just get things running. I think we need to
expand our FAQ section and describe common error in installing or using
tomcat. Whether those answers are in the same howto, or collected in a
general faq is not terribly important. After all, we are making hyperlinked
documents, so whether the information is on one page or two is not too
important. But, since I like to just "get things running" on my machines
first, I personally like howtos that do that. Then when I run into problems
or want more advanced configuration options, I re-read the howtos looking
for pointers to the information I'm looking for.
But I definitely think you are correct that "if we can ask the
questions,
we can answer them"! And if not, we damn well better figure it out! We're
the -dev list! :)
dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir R. Bossicard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 5:59 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: about writing howtos
Hi all,
things are starting to look much better and I really appreciate to see
other people being involved.
I just would like to share some thoughts about writing howtos.
For me, writing howtos is of course providing the user with an easy
step-by-step manual but also an opportunity to fix problems and improve
the project.
Few examples:
- installation howto: not everyone will will with the CVS repository (in
fact it's a minority) and the majority will try to compile the src
release (xindice-src.zip). But there's no such release right now... So
the first task it to write a task to create the releases (a first try is
in the contributor.xml file).
- tomcat howto: how can the location of the database be configured? The
war file is unpacked into (currently) xindice-1.1b. Since the end user
doesn't care about the version, how can Tomcat automatically reference
the webapps as 'Xindice'?
If we are able to ask the right questions, there are enough experience
on the ml to find the right answers.
That was my 2 cents of the day
Keep up the good work!
-Vladimir
--
Vladimir R. Bossicard
Apache Xindice - http://xml.apache.org/xindice
