Hi Everyone!

We are getting a lot of requests for improvements in the
documentation.  Mostly these are coming from people who want to try
Coda and are less experienced with the Coda environment than some of
the die hards whom we have witnessed on the list. 

Often the requests come with harsh criticism of the current
situation. This criticism might well reflect truth, but those who are
critical should realize that Coda needs to them to help, less to
complain.  The Coda project will never have the resources to make a
turnkey system - however with outside contributions we might get there
- the progress has been pretty encouraging.

There is only one way in which the documentation will improve:

  - correct the SGML source files for the documentation, and
  mail us a patch. 

  - If you don't like our manual at all, then perhaps starting again, and
  making a HOWTO is the best solution. Please do use SGML then we get PS, HTML
  and text format, that is incredibly useful.

The key issues to address first are:

 1. installation of client and server
 2. setting up volumes 
 3. setting up users
 4. how to try out disconnected operation
 5. A troubleshooting FAQ 
 6. trying out server replication

I think if a few people take the time to look at the client and server
installation and verify and improve every step, perhaps adding a few
explanatory notes at the beginning then this can be done with
relatively little effort.

>From our end we will incorporate the patches right away, or add your
document to our WWW site.  

Also we are trying to produce some information about Coda to get
hackers going.  At the moment we can't keep up with the bugs outside
users are discovering and we want to mobilize the world to help us fix 
them. 

Please help us - we need dozens of  volunteers here to improve Coda.

- Peter -