Documentation

[mcnulty]

Hi,

First of all, this is NOT meant to be an aggressive question. I'm looking for answers, not flames and in that sense I am neither being aggressive or accusatory in return.

Background:

I consider myself to be a reasonable hand at linux / unix. I am responsible for an AIX and Red Hat box at work which run a large erp package on them. I also have my Red Hat box at home which has it's own copy of the erp system plus a few other things which I have managed to install with no real problems (gShield firewall, ISDN auto dialing, iptables, half-life / counter-strike server, samba, SWAT etc etc). I am by no means an expert, but I know enough to keep my own and my work machines running happily and smoothly.

I have spent roughly 22 hours so far over the last few days trying to get showeq running (not including the overnight my sluggish home box needed to digest the qt install). I have spent loads of time searching the boards, read and re-read the FAQ and the INSTALL and INSTALL.newbies guides. I haven't found one decent step-by-step guide to installing and running showeq, at least nothing that is user friendly or complete.

My question is, is this deliberate? I read the part of the FAQ about the windows version and why there isn't one. If I managed to get past my current (and hopefully last - installing a key sniffer) problem, would there be any interest in a document that describes in simple laguage the full steps from downloading to fully up and running showeq?

I'm not trying to cast aspertions, and I am fully aware that there are many thousand users out there with far greater skills than mine who have managed to get this system running easily with the current level of support. This board is also very good - my one unresolvable question on qt I had was answered quickly and correctly. My point is that if such a piece of documentation was written, you would hopefully stop getting the repeated noddy questions on the board that I wanted to ask but was just about smart enough to use the search feature for first...

So is it worth me writing an in-depth, easy to follow install guide?

Joe.

[datadog]

hmmm

THere are quite a few how to threads in the help section. The best ones are for redhat 7.2 and 8.0.

As far as being intentional, i'd say that the docuementation that exisits was not supposed to be completely thorough. THere are certainly enough talented people working on this project that if they wanted to they could have put together an excellent documentation package.

I think the intention is to provide just enough documentation to point folks in the right direction. There is enough documentation that folks who are willing to put in the time and effort to learn a few things about how linux works, etc... can get SEQ going.

I remember when Redhat 8 came out, and someone put together the How-To thread for that, there were quite a few complaints about it being too easy.

The fact is it is really easy (not counting the key sniffer thing) to get redhat 8 installed and SEQ compiled. If you can live with QT 3 and no decode just about anyone with some determination should be able to get that far. Getting SEQ built with the right version of QT adds a level of complexity, and the keysniffers add a new level of risk as well as complexity to it.

I believe dedpoet has just revamped the FAQ to account for the keysniffers.

As far as whether the dev's would be like to add more thorough documentation to the project, i will defer to them to answer.

[mcnulty]

I agree with the points there and as I said before, I reconise this site is exceptional in it's level of knowledge.

I just found it frustrating to have to spend some time searching for an answer avery time something wasn't clear that's all. I agree that to get the basic GPS mode up and running wasn't too bad, once my spurious hardware error had been found n' fixed ;o)

Anyways, was just curious if it was an intentional thing.

Joe.