A nice idea, however I think that the ones that are don't like to hand over
RPG documentation to the public space.
I don't think it is really "handing it over" but rather allowing an
electronic verbatim duplication.
(what if a new version came out... Who would maintain all the pages with
explanation out there on wiki?).
IBM would still produce the contents of "thee manual", but again, would
allow the community to duplicate it on the wiki. Right now anything would
be better than the pragmatic documentation found in WDSC (hit F1, takes you
to the help where you get about half of what you need).
Which takes me to the second obstacle: handing it over to a wiki would mean
that they would loose control over the way it is written, and the
correctness of the contents -it is about 99+% correct at the moment- and I
imagine they don't like that; even though there is a remote chance that it
might actually get better.
Again, there would be a verbatim copy of it in the wiki with community
comments to supplement it. IBM isn't adverse to change and loosening the
reigns when they see their bread and butter going else ware. They have
given away (opened up) one of the best IDE's known to the computing world
(Eclipse) because they saw the potential for what the community could do
with it. Take a look at all the different open source things going on at
Apache, W3C and the like - IBM has their fingers in community all over the
place.
All in all I think IBM will not take the step.
That's up to them. They have a thriving community of RPG developers that
they could use to their benefit. In the end it all depends on if we can get
the ear of somebody inside IBM who has the same vision as us. Maybe Bob
Cancilla would be somebody to get the ear of. As I understand it part of
his title is "Rational Evangelist".
Thanks for your comments Cor,
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces+albartell=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces+albartell=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Takken, Cor
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 12:20 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: Who Knew You Could Do That... Was->RE: Dynamic 'callp'
Aaron,
A nice idea, however I think that the ones that are don't like to hand over
RPG documentation to the public space. First of all because this would make
maintenance of that documentation very complex (what if a new version came
out... Who would maintain all the pages with explanation out there on
wiki?). I like RPG documentation, have liked it from the very beginning,
going way back to 1989... Not the senior like others out there, but getting
gray at the edges ;^) .
Being exposed to the documentation of other languages and platforms lately I
know that IBM did a good job on it - you won't believe what I have to wade
through these days...-. Which takes me to the second
obstacle: handing it over to a wiki would mean that they would loose control
over the way it is written, and the correctness of the contents -it is about
99+% correct at the moment- and I imagine they don't like that; eventhough
there is a remote chance that it might actually get better.
All in all I think IBM will not take the step.
However, if more people would like to contribute to the wiki-site at
midrange (perhaps enriching it with concrete design patterns for
instance) the platform and RPG might even gain ground on other platforms and
languages.
Cor
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of albartell
Sent: donderdag 9 augustus 2007 1:44
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: Who Knew You Could Do That... Was->RE: Dynamic 'callp'
Not to take away all the long hours of enjoyment of constantly updating a
moving target <wink>, but have you and IBM ever considered a larger
community effort?
One place where I have found great benefit to a formal manual supplemented
by community comments is the PHP language site. They have the formal
declaration for a particular function and then user comments describing best
practices, things to watch out for, alternatives, etc.
Take a look at the "round()" function here:
http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.round.php
Let's open the doors on RPG documentation and see where we can take the next
generation of it! Maybe we could do a trial run with
http://wiki.midrange.com/index.php/RPG to see how well it works in that
technology.
Would IBM allow the reference manual to be duplicated on midrange.com in
wiki form? Here is what I found for a copyright:
<snip>
C Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 1994, 2004. All
rights reserved. US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or
disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.
</snip>
I think a lot of good things could come out of it for IBM too, like having a
solid place to go for reviewing how customers are using the different API's
and how the compiler team could make them better.
Granted this list works good for that too, but the posts aren't monitored,
modified and "honed" like a wiki environment is.
Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:44 PM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Dynamic 'callp'
"Speaking of "the redbook", what ever happened to the sequel.... uh...
refresh of that title?"
It is a very long story involving IBM legal - myself and Susan being over
committed - editors not being available once some of the text was ...
Net is that there are a few chapters in progress - have one with me on this
trip for final edit but haven't cracked it open yet. They will likely
appear as RedPieces at some point but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for
an update of the book per se.
Jon Paris
Partner400
www.Partner400.com
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