In many Open Source Software (OSS) projects, documentation often fails to
get the attention it deserves. Writing documentation is a low
priority task on the to-do list of many software developers. They like
to write exciting code, come up with cleverly devised algorithms, or try
to break the unbreakable. That's all very fine, but we think it's also a pity.
Many good OSS projects could have had a much broader user
base if more care had been taken to properly document the project.
There are a lot of good (or bad if you wish) reasons for this lack of
project documentation:
- Developers like writing code much more than writing documentation.
- Developers tend to say: "Read the source, Luke".
Quite, but that simply won't do for end users.
- Writing documentation is not considered high-quality work,
but it most certainly is.
- "Users never bother to read documentation, so why bother to write
any?" There might be some truth in that, but then again, if the
documentation were well-written...
On the other hand, there is one very good reason why documentation
should be written:
- "Stop bugging me with your questions! RTFM!"
RTFM is Internet jargon and stands for 'Read The F****** Manual'.
The abbreviation certainly shows what many developers tend to think
of manuals in general.
Others in the Internet community maintain that the full expression is
'Read The Fine Manual'. Whatever the case, we certainly hope
that the readers of this installation guide, when installing their
ServerAtSchool server, will come to regard the latter version as
correct.
One of the reasons for our writing this guide the way we did is our
target audience, who will be wanting a step-by-step guide. Another
reason is that we prefer not to have our work interrupted and precious
time wasted by people asking questions when the answers can be
found in this guide. We did our very best to make this
installation guide as complete as possible. Please read Appendix C. How the ServerAtSchool
documentation was written, which describes in detail the
procedures that we used to produce this guide.
This guide has a companion manual, the
ServerAtSchool User Manual,
which is intended for the local systems administrator, the ICT
coordinator, teachers, pupils, and other end users. It documents the
complete procedure for setting up workstations with educational
software in a school environment, the day to day system administration
tasks, and also contains basic instructions for end users to get started,
such as how to log on to the network and how to use webmail.
We hope you will enjoy your own server at school for years to come.
Peter Fokker, Bussum, the Netherlands <peter (at) berestijn (dot) nl>
Dirk Schouten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands <schoutdi (at) knoware (dot) nl>
March 2006
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Authors: Peter Fokker <peter (at) berestijn.nl> and Dirk Schouten <schoutdi (at) knoware.nl>
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