Hello,
Wow...a busy list already :-)
I read through Philip's document last night and I think I must have
missed something.
What I am a bit confused about is to what extent Philip is going to be
supporting/maintaining/developing Exim in the future? I appreciate that
the product no doubt takes much more of his time than it may have done
in the early days (we started using it with version 1.64), and that he
may well need to off-load some of this, but to what extent?
Regarding other issues that have been raised:
1) If there is to be a 'head developer' then I too hope that Philip will
take that role and direct the product as he sees fit. I would still like
to think of Exim as Philip's, but with support from other people too.
2) Documentation. Philip has mentioned in the past that the Docs are
produced by a slightly obscure means! Not a problem...until now I guess
:-)
I would very much agree with Nigel's comment that the Exim doc's are a
selling point - it was one of the reasons I chose Exim for the Uni - and
they should be maintained.
However, a point to consider is that the current doc's are written by
Philip, and, albeit that he may not know it, they have Philip's 'style'
associated with them. Trying to explain something to someone else is not
always a problem, but different people will use different words and
phrases. Some people will just confuse others. Philip has a fairly easy
way of explaining things in the documentation - heck, I can understand
it and it's very easy to confuse me :-)
Depending on the docmentation maintainer (docs group?), future docs may
not be so easy to read - just something to bear in mind. However, I seem
to remember a technical author appeared on the Exim users list some time
ago, perhaps they would like to help out. I'll see if I can dig out an
address and inform them of what is happening. (We had a technical author
assigned to our team when I worked a spell at Mcdonnell-Douglas; they
would be a very useful member.)
For myself some of you may well know that I usually read through the
specification and the mail filtering doc, and let Philip know of any
typos and the like. I am sure it may well annoy him when I pick up on
some small thing that isn't really going to bother anyone, but, to me,
just isn't right :-) I will be happy to carry on with this. In the past
this has always occurred after the docs were released, again that can
continue, but if the ability to update the docs is easy enough then it
may be more worthwhile if I could do it on-line?
As has already been mentioned by others, we have other work and
commitments such that time spent on a project such as this varies from
person to person. To that extent, yup I'm busy :-) However, I have no
real problem with helping out with the documentation, but initially
there may well be a steep learning curve as to using various 'document
producing' packages - it is not something I have done before!
That's it.
John.
--
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John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: John.Horne@??? Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839
