[Dovecot] Lack of external documentation?

[Chris Hoogendyk]

On 3/15/12 4:46 PM, Jerry wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:27:37 -0400
> Terry Carmen articulated:
>
>> On 03/15/2012 03:06 PM, Steve Campbell wrote:
>>> Firstly, this isn't meant to be critical, and I realize the subject
>>> line probably suggest criticism, so...
>>>
>>> I was sort of forced into using dovecot as my imap/pop server due
>>> to upgrading 3 versions of OS on my mail servers. So far, that's
>>> not bad. What surprises me is that one of the first things I
>>> usually do whenever I start using different software is to purchase
>>> a book that seems to suit me. Searching all of the common places
>>> like amazon, ebay, etc for manuals turned up little to nothing on
>>> dovecot.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering why and is this so new that people just haven't
>>> written books about it yet?
>>>
>>> The one thing I'm a little critical of, though, is that trying to
>>> make heads or tails of dovecot by following the online
>>> documentation is a little problematic. I'm constantly jumping to
>>> another page and then back to the original page, and for the most
>>> part, I just don't know enough about it all yet to know what I'm
>>> looking for.
>> The best docs are on the wiki and this mailing list. If you find the
>> information in the wiki to be lacking, the best thing you can do is
>> find the solution yourself and/or on this mailing list, and then make
>> a wiki entry so the next person will know how to solve the same
>> problem you had.
>>
>> Dovecot is a complex piece of software, and understanding some
>> functionality requires reading the wiki, asking on the mailing list
>> and/or examining the source code. You can also obtain paid support
>> from these companies: http://dovecot.org/support.html
>>
>> I'll be the first to admit that complex and specialized
>> configurations are sometimes difficult to figure out, however this
>> list has always been a tremendous amount of help.
> The lack of truly informative documentation has been the Achilles' heel
> of open-source software since its inception. I feel your pain. I have
> always loved a hard copy, i.e. book documenting the subject I am
> studying. Jumping from screen to screen sucks, plus how do I highlight
> a passage on the monitor for future reference? There have been a few
> books written to document Postfix, but to the best of my knowledge, none
> exist for Dovecot.

I like books, but, especially in the case of actively developed software such as Dovecot, they 
become outdated very quickly.

I have two editions of the Unix System Administration Handbook (can't remember the last time I 
looked at them), and two editions of Backup & Recovery. I use Amanda for backup. It has been 
developed actively over the last several years, and the Backup & Recovery chapter on Amanda is 
sorely out of date. The wiki, the users mailing list, and the man pages are the only way to really 
be up-to-date. With the book, you won't know anything about any changes or additions since the book 
was written, which would have been at least many months before it was published.

I'm into online documentation every day. I'm a Solaris admin, but I've been jumping from Solaris 10 
to Ubuntu without any books, and I've been jumping from ZFS to LVM without any books. That's a 
significant transition. But it seems I can find almost everything online. Sometimes another admin 
gives me an explanation and a link.

It's just the way things are. The digital world is moving too fast to be frozen in print.


-- 
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Chris Hoogendyk

-
    O__  ---- Systems Administrator
   c/ /'_ --- Biology&  Geology Departments
  (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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Erdös 4