[Dovecot] Lack of external documentation?

[Jerry]

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.

-- 
Jerry ♔

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