I'm a little late on the topic, but I didn't have access to my e-mail over the weekend. Like some others mentioned, I am a software engineer first and an installer person third or fourth ... some perspective, comments, ideas ... sorry, this is long.
I started learning WiX in late 2006 after management finally came to the realization that our current installers (written by a third party) had no chance at all of working under Vista. After looking at InstallShield 12, Wise and WiX, I chose WiX for my emergency development, specifically v3 as I got the impression it was stable enough (and hasn't given me reason to doubt) for general application installers. The tutorial Gabor created and maintains was good to start out with and gave me that initial "WiX is easy and I like it" feeling. However, as it is for v2, it didn't cover some things I needed to know and other things didn't apply. There are several great WiX bloggers out there and some really awesome explanations of more advanced topics. However, I find searching for and reading blog entries a really painful way to come up a learning curve. So, I started reading the mailing list religiously and saved notes whenever I saw something I thought might be useful. I created and admin a very successful intranet MediaWiki site at work, so I started saving these notes on an intranet wiki of my own, because despite the creation and early promise of wixwiki.com, it is locked down very tightly, not really organized, I can't even find an e-mail address to request an account from (though I could probably search for rmacfadyen in wix-users), and there have been a whopping 5 changes in the last 60 days. Before I know it, I'm up to over 50 pages of rough notes and link collections (see http://www.mindcapers.com/wiki/WiX). I'm also seeing the same questions on this list over and over. I'm having to dig through WiX source code to answer some of my questions. I look for a book on WiX, there isn't one. With the WiX v3 roadmap looking like completion at the end of 2007, I'm thinking by then I'll move from "competent user" to "expert" with the demands ahead of me anyway. My 16 years of professional development gives me enough insight to how long this learning curve will take. I start considering writing a book for software developers to come up the intermediate learning curve to save some of the pain I went through (thank you Google for easing that effort!). As I started digging around more, and putting notes in a Word document, there are dozens (at least) of developers blogging about WiX. There is a Wiki. There is a mailing list. There are at least a couple people contemplating writing a book. So ... what I would really like to see is group effort on getting one superb set of documentation together rather than the hodge-podge of incomplete sources of information that exist today. I am willing to help, leading or following, doesn't matter. Any of the following would be great: * I am an excellent MediaWiki admin and could clean up, categorize and improve wixwiki.com given the opportunity. * I would be happy to migrate my non-duplicated WiX materials to wixwiki.com. * My wiki has open registration if the tightly locked down wixwiki.com site isn't loosened up a bit. * I would love collaborators on a book. I haven't written an entire book before, but I've got a good outline started and a knack for translating technical mumbo-jumbo into understandable explanations. I also have excellent organizational skills. However, there are some topics I have only glossed over (IIS, SQLServer, xmlconfig) as these aren't of immediate interest to me. Besides, it is a bit silly for a relative outsider to try to go it alone and re-create wheels that have already been rounded. A book probably isn't all that far off with "go ahead and steal my blog entries as long as you consider me a contributor" permission grants. It would also be silly not to have at least small pieces of book created by Rob, Bob and the other Wixperts. A wiki can be as good as a book if organized correctly. There are also MediaWiki extensions available to convert wiki sites into .chm files, which would be immensely useful for those of us that go "off network" for a few days at a time. I sent an e-mail to wixadmin quite a while ago asking for a release to sign and offering to assist with the help files, but never received a response. I have no idea whether that was due to my lack of "karma" or a bit-bucket e-mail address. Anyway, enough babbling from me. What would you like to see? I seem to be set of creating or improving *something*, for my own use if nothing else, might as well make it easier on myself and share with the world at the same time. Julie Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________________________________________ Scanned by IBM Email Security Management Services powered by MessageLabs. For more information please visit http://www.ers.ibm.com _____________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
