| Subject | Re: [Firebird-general] Re: Make a wiki and centralize all info about firebird there |
|---|---|
| Author | Paul Vinkenoog |
| Post date | 2009-01-13T00:59:32Z |
Martijn Tonies wrote:
Thanks to Lester, we did have a working wiki and some other people contributed too. But it didn't attract a lot of steady contributors, just as the documentation subproject doesn't.
It seems very hard for people to realize that producing reliable, structured documentation is WORK, and takes TIME. Lots of time. There's nothing very heroic about it, but it can be rewarding. Whether you write directly into a wiki or produce DocBook XML which is later rendered to HMTL and PDF doesn't make a hell of a lot of a difference. It's the organizing of the material, structuring the document, checking and double-checking facts, formulating the narrative, trying to explain complex subjects to the reader without confusing him even more instead of helping him understand, etc. etc., which eats up your time. Setting up the wiki anew won't change that. I still hope it will be done, and I hope it will be successful, but from my docwriter's POV I also know that this not the magic bullet that will give us - to name but one thing - the much-needed Firebird Language Reference. That's why I'm not going to invest much time in it. Lend a hand from time to time, OK, but the work I'm currently doing in the doc subproject is IMO very useful and the time I can spend on Firebird is limited, so I'm not going to change much about that.
Still, I'm glad to see that several people are enthusiastic about the wiki concept and I hope that some of them will become active contributors. Yes, of course the project could use some fresh blood. Lots of it!
Cheers,
Paul Vinkenoog
> No-one who takes the lead and invests a significant amount of time =Lester Caine took the initiative and I guess he's invested a considerable amount of time (unless he's a positronic robot after all).
> no people who continu = no wiki.
Thanks to Lester, we did have a working wiki and some other people contributed too. But it didn't attract a lot of steady contributors, just as the documentation subproject doesn't.
It seems very hard for people to realize that producing reliable, structured documentation is WORK, and takes TIME. Lots of time. There's nothing very heroic about it, but it can be rewarding. Whether you write directly into a wiki or produce DocBook XML which is later rendered to HMTL and PDF doesn't make a hell of a lot of a difference. It's the organizing of the material, structuring the document, checking and double-checking facts, formulating the narrative, trying to explain complex subjects to the reader without confusing him even more instead of helping him understand, etc. etc., which eats up your time. Setting up the wiki anew won't change that. I still hope it will be done, and I hope it will be successful, but from my docwriter's POV I also know that this not the magic bullet that will give us - to name but one thing - the much-needed Firebird Language Reference. That's why I'm not going to invest much time in it. Lend a hand from time to time, OK, but the work I'm currently doing in the doc subproject is IMO very useful and the time I can spend on Firebird is limited, so I'm not going to change much about that.
Still, I'm glad to see that several people are enthusiastic about the wiki concept and I hope that some of them will become active contributors. Yes, of course the project could use some fresh blood. Lots of it!
Cheers,
Paul Vinkenoog