["Maynard, Chris" <Christopher.Maynard@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulf,
I'd like to start out by first saying that many people know how hard
you've worked not only on the documentation, but on everything else as
well, and although the documentation may seem like a thankless job, it
is certainly appreciated and I'm sure your efforts have helped many more
people than you'll probably ever know.

That said, I'm not quite sure why you seemed to have been so taken aback
by the recent posts that started with Dave Ramsey's inquiry.  He seems
like someone who is fairly new to Ethereal and obviously does not have
your level of expertise.  I read the chain and did not observe any
whining but rather a simple call for help from the developers in which
he seemed to even be joking at a bit at his own inability to get
started.  

And I took Guy's comments as intended to be constructive feedback in
order to try to improve the documentation, not to dictate to you what it
must say.  It's my personal feeling that if folks new to Ethereal are
still having trouble getting started, then even though there may be
multiple ways of doing something, new folks are basically looking for a
cook book of exact steps to follow because they just want to get going
quickly in order to solve their own problem and not necessarily to learn
all the ins-and-outs of Ethereal development ... at least not right
away.  The easier it is for new people to get started, hopefully the
more productive they'll be and the more interested they'll be in
Ethereal, which will hopefully lead to more of them contributing to its
development in the long run.

On behalf of the many people who have benefited from your work, I hope
that you are only venting some frustrations, that you will not abandon
work on the user's guide and that you will continue to be open to user's
& developer's feedback regarding the documentation, much like a
dissector author might receive comments on ways to improve a particular
protocol dissector.  In some sense, it is easier to write Ethereal
dissectors than good documentation because for the dissector,
essentially it works or it doesn't, but the documentation is not
measured by the same criteria.

I'd like to conclude with this:  Since August 2003 (which probably makes
me a newbie to most), I have developed over 15 proprietary dissectors
for my company and I maintain them all, some of them quite complex
(unfortunately).  When a new Ethereal update is released, I update our
customized version to keep pace.  I maintain our own documentation and
our own internal Ethereal group so I can easily disseminate information
to people within the company who are using it, and so they can provide
feedback, report bugs, etc.  Many times I have asked for help, but in
the 2.5 years I've been involved, thus far nobody has been able or
willing.  I wish others would assist me because I know that some of the
dissectors are lacking, other protocols are yet to be written, and in
some cases I simply can't gather even the test captures I need in order
to fully test the dissectors.  Even within my own company it is hard to
get any help or constructive feedback.  But regardless, I know that what
I do serves a useful purpose and I enjoy doing it because the work I've
done has helped people and I know it will continue to do so.  There are
no rewards for my work; it's not even a funded project.  I work on it
mostly in my "spare" time, but I guess the personal satisfaction is why
I do it.  I hope it's why you do it as well.

Best regards,
Chris Maynard,

P.S. I know you hate the following disclaimer, but I have no control
over it being added to the outgoing e-mail.  For the record, I hate it
too.


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