Hi Hannes,
As you most probably know, Harbour Project is a volunteer operation,
so (in case there is nobody wanting to volunteer in documentation
writing - which seems to be the case) the only thing this list can
do is give some means for donations targeting your documentation
efforts. This in practice means that besides help in writing docs,
a PayPal icon will be put in all relevant places (website, sf.net page
if possible).
To make it very simple and effective, probably you should post you
own PayPal address where donations can be sent, collect money and
start dealing with the project by your own means. I don't know the
details of your xhb.com agreement, so you may or may not be able to
use that work as a start. Of course it would make things better if
you could.
Very important to note however, that we - as Harbour Project - can
only endorse this effort if your work is licensed in a way compatible
with Harbour. This is currently one of the Creative Commons licenses,
which we should agree on beforehand. This should ensure it can be
distributed, stored and modified similarly to the source code, given
full credit to you of course. For an example for such documentation,
see Subversion free book online. See CC website for licensing options,
we currently use Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 for Harbour parts.
Given of course, that above scenario is acceptable for you, otherwise
we will have to find other solution.
Brgds,
Viktor
On 2009.07.07., at 4:07, Hannes Ziegler wrote:
Hi all,
I have followed this thread with great interest and would like to
add my
2cents as the external help author who has written the xHarbour docs:
1) Programmers are no help authors
2) Software cannot be spread without good documentation
3) xHarbour.com has invested into good documentation
4) Harbour programmers have failed to produce good documentation
5) It is impossible to create good documentation from source code
To 1)
Programmers want to write source code. They don't want to explain in
grammatically exact words what they have done. They are satisfied
when a
source code works, and are in most cases unable to explain the
preconditions
for the source code to work. The preconditions, however, must be
documented
(e.g. data types of parameters that must be passed to a function).
To 2)
Users that try an unknown software rely on the documentation of it.
Attracting
users to a _programming_language_ like xBase via Harbour or xHarbour
is not
possible without documentation.
To 3)
The xHarbour investment into documentation is a logical step of
xHarbour.com
in providing services to the Harbour/xHarbour community. It is sad
to learn
that both communities are not big enough (yet?) to justify this
investment.
There is no payback of the investment achieved.
To 4)
The open source model of Harbour did not produce enough momentum for
help
authors to step in. Reason: the first 500 pages of documentation
could be
copied from the Clipper docs (illegally?)
To 5)
The creation of documentation must be separated from the creation of
source
code. There is no way around this. Reasons: a) source code comes
first b)
programmers are no help authors and c) documentation comes next.
Conclusion:
I don't know nothing about contracts between Harbour/xHarbour, but
IMO it is
absurd to create two times a documentation for almost the same
thing. Maybe
the Harbour users should learn that services cost money, even in the
open
source era. The service of producing documentation is not created by
Harbour
developers but by xHarbour.com, which has bought my services for
this very
issue.
Regards,
--
Hannes Ziegler
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