On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:32:55 -0600 Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com> wrote:
> Product support, customer service, in general, sucks. Online, > offline, commercial, open source, just about everywhere. For > software these days, you are supposed to join a forum. If I went > back through all my forum posts asking for help, I think I'd be lucky > to find 10% of them have had answers to my questions. I changed the subject line because the old subject line infuriated me... Getting support is difficult, but luckily there are things you can do to make solution more likely. Certainly the first step if you're asking for tech support is to read this and live by it: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Speaking for myself, when somebody majorly violates the tenants of the preceding link, I never provide an answer, even if I know the answer by heart. Life's too short, I'm too busy, and answering questions doesn't pay the rent, so I have no need to be nice to the vast hoards of unthinkers. Next, and this is very pertinent to the LyX list, when submitting an example of a bug, submit a minimal example. I mean continue to remove things until anything else you remove makes the symptom disappear. This accomplishes two things: 1) It probably solves your problem without help. If you can flip a symptom on and off by adding or removing one sentence, you're probably in a position to understand the mechanism of the problem. 2) It makes it much easier for anyone responding to you to reproduce your problem, and to quickly understand what's going on, and either tell you the answer or tell you where to look next. Sometimes, when submitting a Minimum Example for a problem that seems to be a LaTeX problem (actually my misuse of LaTeX would be more accurate), I'll go so far as to code it in LaTeX, not LyX, and then post the question. This rules out LyX, making it easier for the list inhabitants to 1) Know whether the solution is within their area of expertise, and 2) Rule out LyX right away. LyX-List inhabitants are nice enough that they'll answer LaTeX questions, even though technically LaTeX is not their product. Having been on the LyX-Users list since 2001, I've seen a lot of help requests come with giant LyX files. Does the submitter really expect *me* to carve up his gigantic document in order to make a Minimum Example? Well, that's not going to happen, because if it's too much work for the guy who needs a solution, it's certainly too much work for me. Next, if you have an error message, put it in a search engine. You might find a lot of valuable information. I've found that the guy who answers a lot of questions for others gets a lot of detailed and devoted help when he needs it. I've found this on the LyX list the past 12 years. I help newbies with layouts and light LaTeX and the like, and then the *big brains* on the list help me when I have a showstopper problem. Pay it forward, and you'll get lots of support. Sometimes you post a concise symptom description and minimal example and do everything right, and you know *someone* on the list has info, but you're met with deafening silence. It's time for the patented, can't miss, Steve Litt Answer-Getting Method (SLAGM). What you do is make some sort of kludge to fix your symptom. For instance, with LyX it might be to change your View->PDF (ps2pdf) so that it runs some sort of awk script that copies your LyX file to a dummy, modifies the dummy, and compiles *that*. You then get on the list and brag about your kludge, except you don't call it a kludge, you call it a solution, and in a subdued, low key way you make it obvious that you think you've displayed cleverness in the solution. In less than 24 hours, all those people who didn't have the time to answer your question will leapfrog each other telling you how stupid your solution is, and providing better solutions. You mix and match those better solutions to make your real solution for yourself. Or, if nobody responds, or if people respond "hey man, that's a cool solution", then you actually use your kludge on an ongoing basis. Either way, you have it solved, and you know your solution is the best available. And please, please, *PLEASE*, when your problem is finally solved, end the thread with the solution, and mark the subject <SOLVED>, so other people can benefit from what you learned. It costs nothing to do, and makes the world a better place to live. Thanks, SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
