Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Will Dr. OpenACS survive? Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love the .LRN consortium?

Well Vic, in which case you have all of our blessings to go troll another open source project.

Meanwhile the rest of us will merrily go on using this wonderful, enterprise class framework to build applications, corporate intranets, services and businesses.

The lesson here to anyone new is that you have to pick the bright tool for the right job. If you don't have the skills to do so, hire someone who does have the skills to help you make the right choice. No single project can cover all bases. Sometimes OACS is the answer sometimes it isn't. For us it has saved us time and money (and sanity) no other framework can offer and we wouldn't work in any other framework. For you the calculation may be different.

Otherwise all you will end up is a troll on a forum of a project you don't understand looking like a fool.

Just checked the so called Documentation Project again. Seriously, dudes, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, you have to be kidding. Lots of links don't work and now there is even LESS documentation while there are MORE links pointing to that documentation. How can this be such a mess, while you are creating projects to, supposedly, ORGANIZE things?

Let me give you a hint:

1. We need three documents (just three documents under three urls, not hundred urls)

2. The documents are: Developer, User, Administrator

3. The documents need to have some logical start (LEVEL 0 -- someone who knows nothing about OACS and it's commands) and cover everything, from A to Z. And they need to include documentation for AOL server.

I only found one tiny reference on how to create my first page (this time I did, not before), and even that made me happy.

You may call it trolling but if you look at it soberly and honestly you would have to admit that OACS is falling way behind other projects while it didn't have to. I just came back from Sugarcrm conference. They have done everything in their power to make sure I learn it fast, there is lots of good, clean, working and clear documentation. And they actually listen to their users.

I keep coming back here not for trolling but because I really want this project to succeed.

Regards

Vic May,

How about three documents (User, Administrator, and Developer) starting from one url? https://openacs.org/xowiki/openacs-handbook Ignore the categories on the left side-bar if you want to get more of a document tree perspective.

cheers,

Torben

:)

Let me rephrase that a bit:

Three links with three documents (html and/or pdf), not three links pointing to many other links.

It is pretty obvious that the developers and some users grew up with or grew into OpenACS over many years, probably from it's beginning and all that information seems natural to them. Not so for a person who has never used it before.

Cheers

Vic,

It's true that those pages try to keep 1 topic per page, and are organized somewhat organically to fit various reader's needs.

It seems like you are wanting documentation in a traditional format. What about this? https://openacs.org/test-doc/

cheers,
Torben