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

[Jim Van Meggelen]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tilghman Lesher [mailto:tilghman at mail.jeffandtilghman.com] 
> Sent: July 12, 2006 1:33 PM
> To: Discussions regarding The Asterisk Documentation Project
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-doc] I am new to asterisk..Please help me..
> 
> On Wednesday 12 July 2006 11:53, Jim Van Meggelen wrote:
> > On July 12, 2006, Ira wrote:
> > > 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?
> >
> > 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.
> 
> I think the biggest criticism that I can level is that it was 
> very clear from the writing that chapters were written at 
> different times in the development process, so while one 
> chapter was a good description about how things worked in 
> 1.0, a different chapter would have new and interesting 
> things in 1.2.  The book reads as if you finished each 
> chapter as a work unto itself, and when each was done, you 
> never went back to revise it.  Hence, the book has a feel of 
> a collection of articles about Asterisk, rather than a unified work.

An interesting observation. Another factor was that the chapters were
written by different authors, and yes, at different times.

> > 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.
> 
> I appreciate the difficulty of writing such a book; however, 
> I think it lacked a final review by an editor with an eye for 
> unifying the material.  That's the most substantive criticism 
> that I have of the book.  However, whatever its flaws, it is 
> still superior to have a book that I can feel comfortable 
> pointing others towards than not having one.

We noted many of the same things ourselves. There will be a second edition,
however that is still a ways off, as we are deep into the cookbook at this
time.

Thanks for the feedback.

Jim

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