lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (03/08/87)
Since I'm now working with some new technical writers, I hope to
have the UULINK doc situation in better shape pretty soon--registered
UULINK users will get manuals as soon as they are available.
In general, I have found it exceedingly difficult to find
competent technical writers--this appears to be a fairly common
problem throughout technical industries in the U.S. today, from what
I've heard...
Part of the problem with a manual for a package like this is to
decide WHAT to put in it. I have no interest in putting out a
tutorial on eletronic mail ("What is a '!'? What is an '@'?
What does 'domain' mean?," etc.) That's a book in and of
itself. My concentration has had to be with the defined market--people
who already have experience with the network and uucp/mail systems or who
have such people available to them for assistance. (This applies mainly
to installation--after the package is installed its day-to-day operations
are largely automatic and the main mail/netnews sending/reading programs, etc.
are fairly easy for even inexperienced persons to use.)
In any case, we do not plan to change our market focus--we will
continue to do our best to make sure that the package is
installed only by those persons who have sufficient experience
and knowledge of the network and email systems to be able to
install it effectively, or that they have such a person available, or
that the package is "pre-configured" by someone with sufficient
knowledge before being installed on a inexperienced user's machine.
In general, we've found that if the person doing the installation is
experienced with uucp systems, they will be operational quite
quickly after reading the comments in the various configuration
files and having a brief contact with us. We do our
best to establish that they have such experience available before
we accept an order. We do not charge for telephone consulting
regarding the package, nor do we have any arbitrary limits to
such consulting with users.
By the way, on the subject of netnews--it is true that I (purposely)
didn't go in for elaborate netnews support--judging from
the way these systems are used it appeared (and still does appear)
that sophisticated mail services are of more importance to
most persons using these small machines--and mail was thus my primary
focus. However, I did provide the capability to send and receive netnews
as a Usenet site, knowing that if users had any interest in
fancier netnews handling they could tie in to various hooks to add on
whatever additional netnews functionalities they felt would be useful
to them. And in fact, I've heard from a couple of users who have
written programs that can operate to provide fancier netnews
handling by post-processing UULINK-delivered netnews into different
forms. After I've seen these programs it may well be possible for
me to set up a library of such "user-contributed" UULINK utilities for
for those UULINK users who desire the particular specific functionalities
they offer.
As always, anyone with specific questions about the package and its
applications is welcome to contact us directly for info...
--Lauren--