asterisk users - Aug 2007 - Quick DUNDi Poll Questions, For All Asterisk, Users, Please Give Feedback

> Questions:
> 
> 1. Is the wiki DUNDi example and the dundi.conf file too difficult to
> follow for new users?
> 
I wouldn't exactly say that it is too difficult but that the target
audience for the default examples is not the average person/entity
that could make use of the power inherent with DUNDi.  When an
average * user/admin wants to use DUNDi they will want to start out
small and local rather than worry about all of the intricacies of
the e164 standard.  It is much easier, in my opinion, to learn the
power of DUNDi on a simple level and scale that up to a more
globally connected platform.
> 2. Does the complexity of the DUNDi setup discourage you from using it
> or even attempting to configure it?
I don't see this as the case.  Most people who use * are comfortable
with the level of complexity that is present in DUNDi, they just
don't know where to start.
> 3. If there was a simple tutorial, step by step guide with easy to
> setup and test examples, would this encourage more users to
> investigate and use DUNDi?
Absolutely.  If you need any help in putting this together or if you
simply need people to review a tutorial, I would be glad to assist.
> I'm interested in putting together a new-user tutorial about DUNDi
> configuration and setup.  There is a lot of great information, setup
> guides already but the feedback I get is that the current examples are
> a bit complicated to follow for new users.
Thank you for being a part of the conference last Friday.  Your
participation is greatly appreciated.



Matthew Brothers

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:00:33PM -0400, Matthew Brothers
wrote:
> > Questions:
> > 
> > 1. Is the wiki DUNDi example and the dundi.conf file too difficult to
> > follow for new users?
> > 
> 
> I wouldn't exactly say that it is too difficult but that the target
> audience for the default examples is not the average person/entity
> that could make use of the power inherent with DUNDi.  When an
> average * user/admin wants to use DUNDi they will want to start out
> small and local rather than worry about all of the intricacies of
> the e164 standard.  It is much easier, in my opinion, to learn the
> power of DUNDi on a simple level and scale that up to a more
> globally connected platform.
I'd say that duni.conf is a reference, and you expect it to be an 
introductory document. A reference should be comprehensive. It is best 
used after you've grasped the basic concepts, and together with a text
search. Asterisk's "sample" configuration files actually serve a
role
of a reference.

If you were to look for an introduction-level document in the asterisk
source, you should have started in the /doc directory.

Sadly the documentation there is close to non-existing at the moment:
http://www.asterisk.org/doxygen/1.4/AstDUNDi.html

How did I find that page? I went to the doxygen-generated documentation
for 1.4:

  http://www.asterisk.org/doxygen/1.4/

In there, one non-trivial jump to the rest of the interesting
documentation:

  Related Pages

And there I can find some pretty handy documentation. If you have
anything more to comment on that, I guess the place for that is either
the (practically dead) asterisk-doc mailing list, or looking at some of
the work done on the admin guide for 1.6 .

(yeah, I know, patches are welcome, docs talk, whatever)

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
icq#16849755                    jabber:tzafrir at jabber.org
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com       
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir

>> I wouldn't exactly say that it is too difficult but that the target
>> > audience for the default examples is not the average person/entity
>> > that could make use of the power inherent with DUNDi.  When an
>> > average * user/admin wants to use DUNDi they will want to start
out
>> > small and local rather than worry about all of the intricacies of
>> > the e164 standard.  It is much easier, in my opinion, to learn the
>> > power of DUNDi on a simple level and scale that up to a more
>> > globally connected platform.
> 
> I'd say that duni.conf is a reference, and you expect it to be an 
> introductory document. A reference should be comprehensive. It is best 
> used after you've grasped the basic concepts, and together with a text
> search. Asterisk's "sample" configuration files actually
serve a role
> of a reference.
The config files can be both a reference and an introduction.  Look
at sip.conf.  Most of the examples in that file are relatively
simple, what you would expect for a beginner to set up most of the
time.  There are also some more complex examples in that file.
Lastly, the sip.conf file has a good section that explains pretty
much any option that could be used in sip.conf.  We should strive to
make all of the conf files similar to sip.conf and iax.conf.

I don't disagree with you that a separate intro document is needed
but there is no reason that the conf files could not serve a broader
purpose.

Matthew Brothers

On 8/20/07, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com>
wrote:
> In an attempt to understand why there are no better docs inside
> asterisk.
Well, we're all on the same page then :)
My opinion, summed up into a sentence would be that the people who
create the code have *mostly* commented the main conf files very well.
So well (oh heck, I said one sentence) that they are filled with stuff
you probably won't use as in sip.conf or in the case of the last
features.conf I looked at, totally incomprehensible. "Documentation"
is obviously the process of documenting and will often be terse and to
the point. OTH, I think the words "tutorial", "guide",
"manual",
"how-to" and "cookbook" should be most welcome! I hope a
thousand JR's
write a thousand tutorials on a thousand aspects of asterisk!

We'll get them all talking on http://www.AsteriskUsersConference.org

/r