[Dovecot] Documentation
Enrique Perez-Terron
enrio at online.no
Mon Jul 25 19:10:54 EEST 2005
On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:57:19 +0200, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 20:03 +0200, Enrique wrote:
>> I therefore urge you to suggest what I should look at and write about.
>> Do
>> you have any ideas about how the documentation should be organized? some
>> questions are not strictly dovecot or even imap questions, yet they
>> arise
>> quite naturally for an administrator that is migrating to dovecot or to
>> imap in general.
>
> I've been thinking of doing some major wiki restructuring some day
> before v1.0 release. So that in main page there would be something like:
>
> 1. Information about IMAP, POP3, SMTP and mail servers in general
> 2. Installing and setting up a simple Dovecot installation
> 3. Full guide to setting up a new system
> 4. Migration from existing systems
> - other servers
> - mbox <-> maildir
> - pop3 -> imap
> 5. Troubleshooting
> 6. Supported features / current status / TODO
>
> Troubleshooting should start with generic "How do I find out what the
> problem is?" and then several subsections with specific problems.
>
> I'm not sure if any of this helps with what you wanted to write though,
> since it is going to be a pretty large change.. :)
Oh that sounds like a nice plan. I just did not know what I wanted to
write, I just wanted to have a realistic hope that anybody would care
about what I write. But of course, I will also have to do a good deal
research to get it nearly right.
>
>> I have not (yet) found out anything about the CONTROL= part of the mail
>> environment. Should I write something about it? Is it usefull for system
>> administrators to know about it? What is it?
>
> It'd be useful to know since with maildir that's pretty much the only
> way to reliably implement filesystem quota (set Dovecot's control and
> index files to a partition without quota enforcing).
But this does not sound like the most urgent need.
Perhaps I should start with number 1. above, to expose all my ignorance
about the subject right from the start, and get all your friendly kicks
and blows. Then I would be almost qualified to write something for number
2, the most demanding of all, from a pedagogical point of view. In the
mean time somebody could begin sketching 3. and parts of 4 you happen to
know something about. (I now have a first-hand experience in
mbox->maildir, using formail and procmail - and a script too.)
Are there any issues with clients worth mentioning?
On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:33:24 +0200, Nick Maynard
<nick.maynard at alumni.doc.ic.ac.uk> wrote:
> May I suggest an additional section with a full breakdown of what every
> configuration directive does?
Oh, dear! Just five minutes, and it's done!
But jokes aside, it's a damned good idea. While points 1-6, and especially
2-4 are perhaps more usefull in real life, not having said breakdown feels
rather frustrating.
Could I suggest a thing? Could you have an explicit call on new users to
write a few words about their experiences and frustrations with Dovecot,
whatever they are, some place where they are likely to see it?
Something like "Please tell us a few words about your experiences with
installing and using dovecot! Newbies are also welcome." - and a large
textbox below, and a submit button.
Perhaps a question too: "What is the single piece of information that
could have saved you most effort and time if you only had known it early
on?"
I don't exactly mean a wiki page, because I think about it more like a
surview, not that many would bother to read tons of trivial observations.
But given the present infrastructure, perhaps a wiki page is the easiest.
You may think a mailing list is for just that, but then the threshold is
too high, and you never find out what most people do in real life.
-Enrique
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
More information about the dovecot
mailing list