[sword-devel] Re: Considering write-up on "Getting Started as BibleCS volunteer"

[Lynn Allan]

I came across the following book review.
http://www.ercb.com/ddj/2003/ddj.0311.html

Absolute OpenBSD: UNIX for the Practical Paranoid, by Michael Lucas, is the
book all newbies exploring one of the free or open-source community's most
secure and austere operating systems have long demanded. It is the "missing
manual" to obtaining, installing, using, and administering OpenBSD. Much of
this information can be gleaned from the FAQs at the OpenBSD web site
(http://www.openbsd.org/) and all of it has been asked, over and over again,
on the mailing lists. Absolute OpenBSD is nicely written, organized in the
order newbies need during install, cleanly laid out, and well indexed. New
users should buy the book at the same time they buy the OpenBSD distribution
CD. Because, if it's half as good as I'm saying it is, Absolute OpenBSD will
save newbies weeks of anguished whining on the mailing lists.

IMHO, it does a nice job of capturing the essense of a useful *type* of
documentation oriented to newbies such as myself. Substitute "sword" for
"OpenBSD", por favor. I speak as someone familiar with and responsible for
much "anguished whining on the mailing lists". Sorry About That. More
contained in this post.

<alert -- commence whining>

Inquiring (newbie) minds want to know:
* Is the equivalent of the above book already available?


* Is this part of what twiki (
http://www.crosswire.org/ucgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/WebHome ) was supposed to
accomplish? If so, am I misinformed that twiki is now used so little that it
is effectively counterproductive in that it often/mostly seems to convey
obsolete, inaccurate information? Is it mostly for historical curiousity to
see the state of sword in the Oct, 2002 time frame when it was briefly used?


* Is this part of what of what mvnForm is supposed to accomplish? If so, am
I misinformed that mvnForum has already been effectively abandoned? It seems
that after a flurry of initial curiosity/ha-ha postings, it is nearly as
dead as twiki (one post in the last ten days?)


* What was the learning curve experience of posters to twiki?

* Does "The Sword Project" really welcome volunteer "windoze" developers, or
am I misinformed that this is the equivalent of lip service? Is sword in
reality a linux project for the miniscual end-user base that still uses
linux (not just sysadmins)? Is the amount of time wasted by all-concerned
pretending to have more than negligible interest in BibleCs justified? Why
would someone use BibleCS when much better free alternatives clearly exist?

TIA,
l.allan@att.net

<all clear -- whining and post over>