[Asterisk-Users] newbie questions / documentation feedback?

[Rick Green]

I'm slowly but surely bringing up my first asterisk system, plowing
through the wiki and the asterisk documentation project's book as I go,
trying to understand it all as I go.

Needless to say, I'm getting myself quite confused at times.  What is the
appropriate venue to report my confusion, and possibly give feedback to
the book authors in the form of the litany of questions that come to mind
as I read, which are not answered within a page of the item that prompted
the question?

For example:

Chapter 4, page 24:

What does 'context=default' refer to?  Is this the section of the dialplan
where incoming calls are to start?

What does the channel number 'channel => 1' mean?  Is this the 'slot'
within the TDM400P that the FXS port is installed in?  WHat if I were to
install multiple TDM400P's, is there card# address, or do I continue
numbering channels 5 - 8?  In the case of multiple cards, how do I
determine which PCI slot has 1-4, which 5-8, etc?  WHat about the X100P?
How is its channel # assigned?

Page 25:

  On page 24, you defined channels 1 & 2, now in the 'recap' of the
configuration, you mention channels 1 & 4.  Which is it?

IAX
  The example in the book begins with 'port=5036'.  The sample iax.conf
created by `make samples` starts with the line 'bindport=4569'.  Is this a
typo, an alias, or are they two separate parameters, and if so, what for?
Is there a convention for IAX ports?  I don't want to be too creative at
this stage of the game, so if there's a standard convention, I'd just as
soon follow it.

...I could go on, but it's clear from reading this list that the vast
majority of you are far beyond this point, and I don't want to drag the
list down.  I'd rather go offline with someone who would be interested in
mining my confusion towards the end of clarifying the documentation and
making the process easier for the next generation of users.

-- 
Rick Green

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
 temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                                  -Benjamin Franklin