[yandytex] support in the old days -- and now

[Christina Thiele]

J. R. Setti wrote:

 > My experience with Y&Y was also excellent. The best support I ever
 > seem, with prompt replies to my e-mails, that worked at the first
 > time.
 >
 > --jrs.
 > --
 > Dr. José Reynaldo Setti 
jrasetti at usp.br <mailto:jrasetti at usp.br>
 > ...::: Currently on sabbatical leave at the Virginia Tech 
Transportation Institute :::...
 >        3500 Transportation Research Plaza, Blacksburg, VA, USA -- 
phone: (540) 231-1573
 >
 > Universidade de São Paulo                          400 Av. 
Trabalhador São-carlense
 > São Carlos School of Engineering                 São Carlos, SP, 
Brazil -- 13560-560
 > Department of Transportation Engineering      (55-16) 3373-9596
 >
 >
 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 >
 > --
 > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/yandytex


I agree. While Berthold was at Y&Y, support was great. We got to speak 
with him, and he'd ever-so-patiently go through various steps, even if 
they were really simplistic PC ones.

I'm not a programmer, so he often had to be very very specific in giving 
instructions, as I was -- and still am, to a certain degree -- massively 
fearful of screwing up my machine. And backing out of anything can be 
traumatic if you haven't a clue how to do it. (I mostly work on a 
unixbox and have a husband-programmer ... I admit it's a huge help!)

But Berthold kept on doing these one-on-one help sessions, which were so 
incredibly useful and production and information ... and which were also 
so repetitive. Again and again, the same thing, the same problem, same 
explanation. He tried to deal with it via the two FAQs and then those 
dozens of readme files within so many of the different folders. Some 
would get updated, some would simply lie there, slowly going out of date 
with each revision and upgrade.

And all of this kept on coming back to him alone. He'd made himself 
indispensible -- and thus made himself a perfect candidate for burn-out. 
User support, constant development, writing documentation -- it's too 
much for one person. And when he left, we lost all of that, I as much as 
anyone.

We can look back now and say well, he should have started something like 
the yandytex list a long time ago, and used it as a vehicle for 
distributing all those long and wonderfully detailed e-mails rather than 
sending them to each of us individually. But you can't always think 
about everything. I'm sure that having such a repository of information 
would have made life a whole lot easier for him, and he'd have perhaps 
endured longer. Perhaps.

So, right now, what we have is the yandytex archives, which are 
post-Berthold but not totally devoid of good information.

Some of us have our old correspondence with Berthold, which may still 
have some gems hidden away (long live the packrats of the internet, eh?!).

We have users like Mirko Janc, who poked around in Berthold's 
documentation and found the solution to the Lucida bullets issue today.

Which also reminds us that there's a lot of information squirrelled away 
in those many readme files here and there in our yandy tree that we need 
to look at more. Indeed, one of the big jobs ahead for any working group 
would be to locate all those readme files to make an inventory of which 
ones are still valid, which ones are too out of date, and then deal with 
a re-write of the texts (some were clearly written in haste and could 
use a bit of an edit ;-) ).

But most importantly for the future -- we have one another: everyone on 
this list has expertise in some aspect of Y&YTeX (under whatever OS).

I think it will be a daunting task for a Y&YTeX working group to wade 
through the source code, and try to make something of it. I could 
foresee two main aims:

a. fix the latest version (2.2.8, I think, no?) so that it installs
    properly -- the list of bugs is well-known and fairly well
    documented. This shouldn't take too long -- and would at least
    allow us all to have a version which we could use to install
    on hew machines, without all the hassles of having to do this
    and that fiddly thing. I've done a re-install, but I avoided a
    few things, coz of my fear of messing up, and because it's not
    been needed -- so far (I'm thinking of the bibtex upgrade).

b. familiarity with the work in item a. would then make it easier
    to get on with a major upgrade

Last year, Karl had put a call out for anyone interested in forming a 
working group. Perhaps it's time to think about that again, and signal 
interest in participating in such a group. There are sufficient 
volunteer working groups out there to find an effective model to follow 
(core group + lots of testers might be one), so maybe it makes sense to 
form a working group now, even though Karl's not yet finished sorting 
through all the files, as he'd mentioned earlier this week, I think.

Some things to think about.

User support as we knew it is gone and we all regret it (well ... maybe 
not Berthold ;-) ). It's now up to us to continue finding new ways to 
get that feeling of solid support back. And, if possible, even revive 
development in Y&YTeX.

Ch.