[Dovecot] Documentation

[Enrique Perez-Terron]

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

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