[Zope] Re: Zope Documentation Plan

rgines@purina.com rgines@purina.com
Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:45:36 -0600


>Re: Zope Documentation Plan :  two words......great news !!

>A minor suggestion .... docs for contributed products...having used many
>of the user-contributed products, I have encountered variable quality of
>docs (i.e. "ranging from here it is, you're on your own now" to some
>very nice docs). Maybe a set of guidelines or a template for docs for
>user-contributed products would also be useful.

I will respectfully vote against setting any level of standards in
that arena.   Here's my argument.  While there are many fine
developers who have the intent of creating a product for
distribution which is for all practical purposes a commercial
grade deliverable (with docs and all).  I would not want to set
this as the standard.   If this level of 'compliance' becomes the
norm, then we could easily loose half of the contributions that
are currently in place.   These contributions have been made
by indoviduals who have developed something for their own use
and have tossed it into the community 'as-is' just in case some one
else can find benefit from it.

I do appreciate being able to install a product and have it work like
a champ with documentation, however being able to work through
someone elses contributed code to see how they did x-y-z is of
huge benefot to me as well.   It would be a shame to loose these
resources just because we demanded that the contributor actually
become a literary author as well as code author.

... just my ($1.00/50) worth.