What is the audience of JasperReports?

[2001 JI Open Discussion]

By: kootjekip - kootjekip

What is the audience of JasperReports?

2005-08-10 23:59

I'm I the only one who isn't cleaver enough to understand the internals of JasperReports without proper documentation?

 

I'm I the only one who doesn't understand why things are more complicated than needed, in some cases?

 

What has to be the knowlegde of a new JasperReports User? What should he or she have to know when building additions?

 

 

 

 

By: C-Box - c-box

RE: What is the audience of JasperReports?

2005-08-11 03:16

Hi kootjekip,

 

sometimes I don't understand you! Sorry! But at the one hand you make real good feature requests and give good answers to other peoples questions and at the other hand you complain about things that aren't comprehensible to me.

 

What do you mean with "why things are more complicated than needed" ... As I learned from that forum, you can't do it right to EVERYONE. I made also some feature-requests and Teodor told me sometimes, that it's not a common case or suggested another way.

 

And I think you know that Teodor is working at the API-Doc right now, isn't it!?!? So don't complain about it!

 

C-Box

 

 

By: kootjekip - kootjekip

RE: What is the audience of JasperReports?

2005-08-11 04:33

At first, it wasn't the meaning of bashing anyone around here, I simply asked if it's my fault that I cannot understand the internals of Jasperreports within 3 days, I thought I wasn't good/cleaver enough...So don't bash on me, also....

 

As you know, the documentation of good application should be written before the application is written. This is important because:

 

1) You can't alter the application without having to change the documentation.

2) You have a good starting point for your application. You think about the internals while you're writing the documentation.

 

I've good reasons to complain about the documentation, the application is growing really big and a beginner to jasperreports simply can't see through all the classes how things work, it's costing a lot of time to get the purpose of a class, if there was a little more documentation I diddn't have to search for days to see if something is possible or not. I've deadlines to catch, and its very frustrating that I cannot catch them because I can't figure out how to do something. No offence, but many opensource projects lack good documentation, which is needed to accept the software to a bigger audience.

 

Also if you don't want to lose costumers you have to create good documentation so people can easily understand things. Microsoft for example delevers API docs with a release which are freely availilble.

 

 

 

 

By: Edgar Dollin - edollin

RE: What is the audience of JasperReports?

2005-08-11 12:45

While it is certainly nice to write documentation first, with open source java this is certainly not a necessity.

 

I disagree with your 'facts'.

 

1) You can't alter the application without having to change the documentation.

 

This is not a true statement. A great percentage of changes to applications don't involve a change to the documentation, i.e. bug fixes, performance enhancements, etc.

 

2) You have a good starting point for your application. You think about the internals while you're writing the documentation.

 

If the person who is writing code is the person writing the documentation, only a poor coder would write the documentation first. Documentation is not a specification as much as one would like to think of it as one.

 

Edgar

 

 

By: jorge - sirion_oef

RE: What is the audience of JasperReports?

2005-08-11 15:38

like c-box said, teodor is working hard in the documentation, be patient.

 

you could ask, why not before? every person that use jasperreports have made the same question, that the "ugly" thing in jasperreports. but see the god things:

 

1.- free

2.- many bugfixes

3.- personal answers from teodor (how many times bill gates has answered your questions)

4.- you dont have documentation, but you can ask here an get an answer

 

i think that is very frustating dont understand even an little parameter, but again, be patient.

 

one thing that you could do is post good answers and good request (like you have done yet), this coul be your little contribution in make a better product, because this is our (community) product, every us must to work on it, because this is our responsibility to.

 

keep working guy