Simon, While I think we're generally saying the same thing, I think a lot of people agree with Roedy on this one. Maybe if you've been using Ant for a while, everything's clear and the current docs work for you. But coming in as a newbie, I believe there's more that could be done to reduce the learning curve.
As a "for instance", I spent over an hour yesterday trying to figure out "macrodef", how it's different from just defining a new task, what the differences are between attributes and elements, where this "@@" and "$$" syntax came from?!?, etc. I believe there's a nice middle-ground between making the docset both a tutorial and a reference (kind of like "Java in Nutshell", if you're a Java person). And I too would love to help out, if a group was started to work down this road. Jay | Jay Burgess [Vertical Technology Group] | "Essential Technology Links" | http://www.vtgroup.com/ -----Original Message----- From: Simon Chappell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 9:47 AM To: Ant Users List Subject: Re: Improving the manual On 7/27/05, Roedy Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The big problem with the Ant manual is the people who wrote it knew > too much. I can see various ways to make it more intelligible to the > first timer: Well, I actually like the Ant manual just the way it is. I find it very useful and I get pretty much what I need from it. So please don't force it to change. Now, that said, I am in favour of the creation of documentation more directly targetted at the first time or still quite new user. There are a number of introductions to ant, but something that would take it's time and that explained the concepts would be very useful. I'd volunteer to help, but I'm actually working on some tutorials for the Groovy folks. Simon -- www.simonpeter.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
