Sieve

[Forrest Aldrich]

Hi Derrick,

Does there exist an outline of requirements for a technical writer - ie:
what needs to be accomplished etc.

It's unfortunate you've not been able to keep a technical writer long
enough - I understand that frustration (from previous jobs I've had).

Where would such documentation be best appreciated and utilized - from a
business perspective and from the end-user and sysadmin perspectives.

If it were published in PDF or in a Wiki, it would be easy to get to,
etc.    On the other hand, if there were sufficient resources (and
interest) to place this into a publication - perhaps there might
("might" meaning I'm not sure of the process) be some financial return
to the organization.

Either way, it would be really nice to have this at some point - a
mailing list would be a good ajunct.

Re: the examples on the cyrusoft page and about end-users being able to
"figure it out".   I see your point, however I respectfully disagree.  
By and large there are far more examples and documentation of procmail
out there than there are for Sieve.  Procmail exists in books, online
manuals and texts, etc.   This is the point I was getting at (substance).

There's a lot of promise with Sieve, but I wonder with the apparent lack
of documentation, etc., if it will remain only utilized by those who are
able to discern the code to get it working, etc.

As for procmail, I've read some examples of getting this working with
Cyrus - but it seems to require a login account, which I believe defeats
our purpose of Cyrus and a closed system.   ?


Thanks,

Forrest


Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
>
>> The Sieve web page states:
>>
>>    At present, there is no mailing list or newsgroup for end users of
>>    Sieve.
>>
>>
>> I'm curious, how is it expected Sieve will be more widely adopted with
>> 1) limited documentation (ie: not end-user friendly) and 2) no formal
>> resources to discuss the protocol/language.
>
>
> "It was like that when I found it", so I won't take the blame for the
> current situation. The thing that kills us is we've never been able to
> keep a technical writer long enough to get good documentation for
> anything. It's been on my "sucks" list since at least 2000, and it's
> an issue for internal software and not just Cyrus.
>
> A mailing list can be gotten trivially though but that's not really
> all it takes.
>
>> I've spent a significant amount of time perusing the net for resources -
>> I found Websieve, great - but that doesn't help me educate end users on
>> how to use this.
>
>
> This probably sounds more accusatory than I mean it to, but if your
> users figured out how to use procmail I'd be shocked if they couldn't
> use sieve; In the pre-sieve days I used procmail on my own system, and
> sealed system was not a problem (that's what distributed filesystems
> are for); It would certainly be possible if not necessarily simplest
> to continue using procmail.
>
>
> ---
> Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
> Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
> List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html

---
Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html