[xwiki-users] RE: Xwiki.com API stability and Class/Object model

[THOMAS, BRIAN M (ATTSI)]

I am entirely sympathetic to your situation, having been pretty much in
the same situation about a year ago.  And I believe that I agree
strongly with your feelings and outlook, and I'm personally very eager
to help those who are not as deeply experienced to get up the learning
curve faster than I did and, as you say (if I understand you correctly)
to pass it on to a yet larger and less-experienced group of users.

As to 'these' users and 'those' users, I was responding to Vincent's
skepticism about people actually coming in and annotating the JavaDoc
pages.  Of course they wouldn't if they didn't understand them, but I
would love to do this in the hope of improving the adoption of XWiki,
knowing exactly what would be needed to prevent others (like me, at
least) from going through the pain I went through.  My explanations may
still be opaque to others, but once they get through it they can share
what they've learned.  At any rate, providing the opportunity for
experienced users of the APIs to annotate the Javadocs without
disturbing the actual source code would allow people like me to share
that knowledge in the most appropriate place - right alongside the
official documentation.

My feeling was that Vincent was not adequately acknowledging the new
class[es] of users that tools of this nature enable - those who can now
create end-user applications without needing server access, and even
those (like me) who stand more or less in the gap between the
application builders and the raw system interfaces, who like to make the
tools more robust and easier to use.

brain[sic]  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oova [mailto:ping.scan at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 2:48 PM
> To: xwiki-users at objectweb.org
> Subject: [xwiki-users] RE: Xwiki.com API stability and 
> Class/Object model
> 
> 
> Guys,
> 
> I must be another breed, I barely follow you, 'these' users 
> and 'those'
> users, automatically generated comment pages for users to 
> fill it out, etc..... I am just lost or too old fashioned.
> My humble opinion is as follows. In house building as in 
> software, if you want to enable somebody else to build an 
> application (house) you give them a description, what kind of 
> particular applications (houses) you especially are qualified 
> to help building FASTER and BETTER than usual (Benefits 
> overview and tools to gain those benefits). You also write, 
> what kind of skill set might be useful to take advantage of 
> the tools your provide. Then you provide the architecture 
> (blueprint, ....) and explain what kind of interfaces (for 
> walls, windows, plumbing, roofing,...) you created to enable 
> others to build. To expedite the break-in you give some 
> sample applications illustrating how the architecture, 
> interfaces and tools helped gain the benefits for some use 
> cases. And I am sorry, no offense, you do not ask the 
> engineer who designed the software kit/ housing builder kit 
> do document it, otherwise it becomes a kit from highly 
> skilled engineers for other highly skilled engineers written 
> in a highly specialized technise language, which the target 
> audience might not speak. You normally ask a guinea pig out 
> of the targeted audience to try to document, what it 
> understands and let it build at least one application (house) 
> using the tools provided. And you nurture the guinea pig with 
> enough food, encouragement and help, so the snowball effect 
> making the whole target audience aware of your great stuff 
> can start and you as the engineer can go back cranking out 
> the next great SW and tool for even better applications and 
> houses. Making sense? Any agreement? 
> I am a guinea pig, I am eager to use Xwiki, because for some 
> reason, I think XWiki is a great concept (don't let me go 
> into the 'Crossing the chasm modeling, or the 4 steps of the 
> epiphany', both great models of how to establish innovation 
> in the market place successfully and go beyond the 
> innovator's initial excitement). But you need to let the 
> targeted audience pick-up the momentum. 
> 
> Enough Philosophy, if there is any agreement on what I said 
> before, let me, Guillaume and other 'users' spread the word 
> in a lower level technise. To enable us we need to understand
> - targeted user (groups)
> - architecture
> - concept of object model and API
> - guts (and not only nice webpages) of successful 
> applications of the XWiki (or is the XWikis main purpose to 
> create nice looking webpages? I did not think so)
> 
> Uwe
> 
> 
> THOMAS, BRIAN M (ATTSI) wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >> 
> >> I wish this were true... I don't think a second that it'll work 
> >> though as:
> >> 1) users will say that they cannot document if they don't 
> know what 
> >> it does
> >> 2) once users know what it does, they usually go away
> >> 3) users don't like to document anymore than developers like it
> >> 
> >> :)
> > 
> > Your points are generally true, but when you talk of "users" you're 
> > not necessarily talking of these users.  I'm talking about 
> people like 
> > me who would have loved it if someone had just told them 
> this or that 
> > little tidbit of information, and gladly contribute it, especially 
> > when it's in the context of the document
> > 
> >> But I like the idea...  and would be game to try it... if someone 
> >> else implements it... (all my time is currently used for the 1.0
> >> release)
> >> 
> > 
> > The only reason I haven't already made a start of it is 
> that I haven't 
> > found an HTML DOM parser.  Is there one in the myriad of libraries 
> > that come with XWiki?
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> 
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> http://www.nabble.com/Xwiki.com-API-stability-and-Class-Object
> -model-tf3524008.html#a9861035
> Sent from the XWiki- Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
> 
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