[asterisk-doc] I am new to asterisk..Please help me..

[Jim Van Meggelen]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ira [mailto:ira at extrasensory.com] 
> Sent: July 12, 2006 12:33 PM
> To: Discussions regarding The Asterisk Documentation Project
> Subject: RE: [asterisk-doc] I am new to asterisk..Please help me..
> 
> At 07:47 AM 7/12/2006, you wrote:
> > > >Asterisk The Future Of Telephony is perfect step by step
> > > novice users guide:
> > > >http://www.asteriskdocs.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=11
> > >
> > > I'd tend to suggest it's far from perfect, but having a 
> book to hold 
> > > when starting out is a good thing.
> >
> >So how would you improve it?
> 
> I can only speak for me, but I would have liked more how to 
> and less history. For me the biggest learning curve was 
> creating a dial plan and while it's documented there, it just 
> seems to gloss over it.  I would think that a perfect intro 
> to Asterisk would spend 1/3 to 1/2 of the book discussing 
> extensions.conf.  I can't write, or I'd consider doing a book 
> on creating the perfect dial plan.  

Your writing seems good enough to me.

>I read it which got me 
> here, but once I'd read it mostly I found it didn't have the 
> depth of coverage I needed to go where I wanted to go and so 
> I started using the wiki which is better but disorganized.

Agreed. Depth was not our intent.

> I didn't say it's not worthwhile, just that I don't think 
> it's perfect. I own a paper copy and occasionally I pull it 
> out to read a chapter about something I've not implemented 
> yet and it's useful for letting me know what I'm about to get 
> into and how I might use it, but I don't find it much help past that.

It was never intended to be more than an introduction.

> Then again, I don't know the goals of the authors. If it was 
> to get my interest up so I'd jump in, it worked, if it was to 
> be a manual and reference, it worked less.

It was the former not the latter.

We discussed writing an authoritative bible of all things Asterisk, and
realized that that would be a mighty tome indeed. Also, what we found was
most needed was an introduction. Enough to get started. From that base (as
you have discovered) there was enough information in the community to go to
the next step.

We are working on more with O'Reilly, and there is other stuff in the works
as well. One of the challenges of writing for Asterisk is that it changes so
fast it is hard to keep up with it. It was tough enough writing our book to
handle Asterisk 1.2, since many of the features of 1.2 did not exist when we
started writing.

Anyhow, thanks for your feedback. That was helpful.

Jim

--
Jim Van Meggelen
jim at vanmeggelen.ca
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2177

"A child is the ultimate startup, and I have three. 
This makes me rich."
                    Guy Kawasaki
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