A
?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Sj=F6blom?=
Andrew said:
A
Albert Deinbeck
Andrew Thompson said:
Err... you are serious, right? You have 9 (nine) questions, no index (of
course, what for). OK...
So you don't have a faq yet but are willing to make one.
1. Ask people for contrib: Done
2. Browse newsgroup archives for issues which are frequently discussed.
3. Examine how other faqs are made.
4. Be verbose. Be objective. Be concrete. Be terse.
"XYZ is the best solution to your problem" is not an answer.
a) Define the problem. To know what's going on is the first step to solving
it.
b) Discuss solutions. Name all solutions you know and discuss pros and cons.
c) Give detailed advice. People want to know what to type, which files to
install. Give examples.
d) Give links to further info + resources and _explain_ them.
5. Make and index. As the site grows, make a search.
6. Make cross links.
Albert
D
Darryl L. Pierce
Albert Deinbeck wrote:
<snip>
And, to be honest, the page is way too busy with everything in boxes and no
rhyme or reason to such. A FAQ should be simple and easy to use; if the
reader can't find their question within a few seconds they're going to
leave.
Not to toot my own horn, but I would recommend the OP use a style similar to
my J2ME FAQ. I made it simple, putting the Qs into XML and then generating
very straight forward HTML from it using a stylesheet:
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/xml/faq.dtd> The DTD
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/xml/faq2html.xsl> The stylesheet
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/data/j2mefaq.xml> The input
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/j2mefaq.html> The output
<snip>
And, to be honest, the page is way too busy with everything in boxes and no
rhyme or reason to such. A FAQ should be simple and easy to use; if the
reader can't find their question within a few seconds they're going to
leave.
Not to toot my own horn, but I would recommend the OP use a style similar to
my J2ME FAQ. I made it simple, putting the Qs into XML and then generating
very straight forward HTML from it using a stylesheet:
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/xml/faq.dtd> The DTD
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/xml/faq2html.xsl> The stylesheet
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/data/j2mefaq.xml> The input
<http://mcpierce.mypage.org/j2mefaq.html> The output
?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Sj=F6blom?=
Andrew said:
It looks good, but I found at least one broken link:
http://www.physci.org/codes/java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
It could also be useful to have all the "topics" at the top of the page,
so that it is easy to read only the stuff you are interested in.
D
Dave Glasser
13:26:29 GMT in comp.lang.java.programmer:
To that I would add that I think the primary version of a FAQ should
be in a single plain text file, following the format commonly used by
FAQs at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/
To that I would add that I think the primary version of a FAQ should
be in a single plain text file, following the format commonly used by
FAQs at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/
D
Dave Glasser
I think your draft relies far too much on links to other
sources--links which may or may not work in the future. If you want
the FAQ to be truly useful, put the actual answers to the questions in
the FAQ document itself. And as I replied to another poster in this
thread, I think the primary version of a FAQ should be in a single,
easily searchable, vi-browsable plain text file, in the format
commonly used at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/
?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Sj=F6blom?=
I noticed some of the entries are rather short. Here is some stuff thatAndrew said:
could be added:
Creating EXE files
If you really need to make an exe file, see link to mindprod page.
However, there are number of reasons not to package your app in an
executable:
1) It will probably not be any faster. Modern virtual machines don't
interpret bytecodes, they actually execute native, compiled code. Some
explanation about JIT compilers.
2) Static compilation increases the size of your application multifold,
since all of the libraries you are using need to be linked into the
application.
3) You lose 'free' upgrades to your program. Anytime your user downloads
a new faster virtual machine, your app gets a speed boost. If you are
using an exe, you will not get this benefit.
What kinds of questions belong in the Java newsgroups
No general programming/algorithm questions. They probably belong in
comp.programming, or rarely comp.theory. Language wars are on-topic in
comp.lang.java.advocacy, but not in any of the other java groups.
Examples of questions that do not belong to the java groups:
Q: How do I sort an array of integers?
A: This has got nothing to do with java. A sorting algorithm will look
the same in just about any language. However, you could ask if there is
some standard library function for sorting arrays (java.util.Arrays).
Q: Is Java better than C++?
A: You are a dumbass or a troll. In any case, please go away.
Java IDEs
Some links with short descriptions should be enough.
www.eclipse.org - Industrial strength open source IDE
www.bluej.org - An good IDE for people new to java
Intellij, JBuilder etc.
Resources
Add link to IBM's java page. http://www-136.ibm.com/developerworks/java/
Add link to Sun's java tutorial. Adress escapes my mind.
First steps
It could be good to add a step-by-step guide here. I.e. download the
SDK, install some IDE maybe, read the Sun tutorial. Something to really
make it easy to get into java.
Newsgroups
Add comp.lang.java.machine. For discussions about JVM internals,
bytecode format etc.
Add comp.lang.java.advocacy. For flamewars about java
Add notice about comp.lang.java. This group is dead and should not be
posted to.
That's about it for now.
A
Andrew Thompson
How many questions are frequently asked?
What ones are missing?
I am thinking of adding 'favorite IDE' as
well as a couple of others, but I wnat to
have no more than 15 qns.
I generally gerenate content prior
to bothering with indexes, but I
have added some links at the top.
Be verbose, be terse?
I choose as terse as practical.
I will not respond to the latter comments since
I feel they were made on te assumption that
this was the FAQ.. as opposed to the
'1st draft of the FAQ'
Please, if you have any specific suggestions
for wording changes, topics to include, or leave
out, speak up. Now is the time.
A
Andrew Thompson
I'll be looking to organise the order and
logic of the page once I have a better idea
of what it's content will be.
I was using a nested list at first, as I
assume you are doing in the J2ME FAQ, but
decided to leave it 'flat' for the moment
(same reason as above)
And (pause) as far as the style goes,
I might temper the tone of it down, but
I would gnaw my own arm off before I
would post a web-page with a white
background.
It is _so_ last millennium!
A
Andrew Thompson
This has been expressed by several people,
so I think I should express why I will _not_
be doing it as a plain text file, and why
it will mostly be links.
The majority of the links in the page are
not to a specific document, they are searches
of the Google archives. The key to their
success or failure will lie in how well
I specify the keywords.
The links to the archive are to gently prod
people to look into what has already been
written, and even better, they should always
be 'up to date'.
Unfortunately the links are quite long,
would be unwieldy in a text document, and
I suspect they would break in line length
if posted to the groups themselves. Vis.
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q="java+webstart"&scoring=d&meta=group=comp.lang.java.*>
As a result I am considering merely linking
to it from within the group, though I do not
know how effective that will be. I may have
to eventually produce a version better suited
to textual viewing and usenet
***
Having said that, a lot of the stuff there
was simply to remind me to 'fill it in'.
This seems to have generated a deal of
confusion in that people seemed to think
I was finished on the topic, or had garnered
all relevant links.
I have not, and I apologise for not making
that more clear.
It needs a deal more links to resources at
Roedy's site, and every time I go to Sun
recently I seem to be greeted with pages
that have recently moved and a vague promise
of a better search facility.
I need to chase both up.
Thanks all who have contributed thus far..
D
Darryl L. Pierce
Andrew Thompson wrote:
A list at the top lets the user quickly browse through the actual questions
without getting bogged down with skipping the answers. But, that's a
personal opinion on it; I know I wouldn't spend time reading a FAQ if I
couldn't find a content list for it first.
Yeah, I'm old-school. Y'know, you can always edit the page *after*
generating it.
A list at the top lets the user quickly browse through the actual questions
without getting bogged down with skipping the answers. But, that's a
personal opinion on it; I know I wouldn't spend time reading a FAQ if I
couldn't find a content list for it first.
Yeah, I'm old-school. Y'know, you can always edit the page *after*
generating it.
D
Darryl L. Pierce
Dave said:
What's the advantage to doing this? It seems more cumbersome to have to go
through different documents in order to find your answer, rather than
having them all in one place. If they were all in one file then you could
subscribe to changes to that one document.
M
mromarkhan
Andrew said:
Peace be unto you.
"The Source for Developers"
http://java.sun.com/j2se/reference/faqs/index.html
Some samples
Can applets read or write files?
http://java.sun.com/sfaq/index.html#read
A10. Is JavaScript technology available? How do I find out more about it?
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/faq.html#A10
E5. Why do I get a NoClassDefFoundError when I try to run my HelloWorld
app?
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/faq.html#E5
How do I save an image as a TIFF (or: BMP, JPEG, PNG, ...)?
http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jai/forDevelopers/jaifaq.html#save
How do I keep the information from getting cut off from the top and left
sides of the page when I print using the Java 2D printing API?
http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/2D/reference/faqs/index.html#cutoff
Why can't I run Java 2D applets in my browser?
http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/2D/reference/faqs/index.html#plugin
Have a good day.
A
Andrew Thompson
On Wed, 26 May 2004 21:49:01 GMT, (e-mail address removed) wrote:
<snip links>
Thank you for the links, It appears you
have identified some excellent resources
that I entirely missed.
I will have a look over each and decide
the best place to put it in the PhySci
Java FAQ..
Peace be upon you.
<snip links>
Thank you for the links, It appears you
have identified some excellent resources
that I entirely missed.
I will have a look over each and decide
the best place to put it in the PhySci
Java FAQ..
Peace be upon you.