On 7/15/07, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote:

> I don't think project maintainers owe me something.  I think failing
> utterly to produce useful documentation is kind of a strange trend to see
> in languages that come with excellent documentation tools, and I think
> that my time is better spent using Scruffy (which has better
> documentation) unless I want to actually become the Gruff project
> maintainer myself.  You're the one that assigned value judgments, whining
> tone, and an attitude of entitlement to what I said -- not me.
>
> I think people who put words in my mouth really suck.

You're right.  What I said came off as harsh and rude, and I apologize
for that.  I actually  was more springboarding into the general field
of complaints I hear about Ruby libs not being properly documented,
and I shouldn't have made it seem like I was directing that
frustration at you.

That having been said, undocumented software can be useful to those
who are willing to read the source.  Usually, unit tests are very
illuminating so long as they exist, and if some examples are
distributed with the source, that's enough to get going.  I really
wish that users would contribute more documentation to projects,
because often maintainers simply don't have the time.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that users should meet maintainers
half way.  When that doesn't happen, documentation doesn't get
written.  For example... you could probably help out gruff enormously
by asking relevant questions about things you cannot figure out easily
from the API docs.  But if you have no time for that, well, that's
understandable.  But I feel like all of us are only entitled to get
back what we put in.

Again, sorry for flipping out before, it was unwarranted.

-greg