<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Helping</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="FreeTDS User Guide" HREF="index.htm"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="What to include when asking for help" HREF="askingforhelp.htm"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Advocacy" HREF="advocacy.htm"><LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="userguide.css"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="CHAPTER" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ><SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > User Guide: A Guide to Installing, Configuring, and Running <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN ></TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="askingforhelp.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="advocacy.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="CHAPTER" ><H1 ><A NAME="CONTRIB" ></A >Chapter 10. Helping</H1 ><TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="100%" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" CLASS="EPIGRAPH" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="45%" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="45%" ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" ><I ><P ><I >The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.</I ></P ></I ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="45%" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="45%" ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="TOP" ><I ><SPAN CLASS="ATTRIBUTION" >Bertrand Russell</SPAN ></I ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><DIV CLASS="TOC" ><DL ><DT ><B >Table of Contents</B ></DT ><DT ><A HREF="contrib.htm#PICKWEAKSPOT" >Pick a weak spot and fix it.</A ></DT ><DT ><A HREF="advocacy.htm" >Advocacy</A ></DT ></DL ></DIV ><P ><SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > is a cooperative, volunteer effort. Flame wars on the list are unknown and the signal to noise ratio is pretty high for its venue. Many people have contributed patches, and few have been turned away. </P ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="PICKWEAKSPOT" >Pick a weak spot and fix it.</A ></H1 ><P > <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >We don't have enough non-English speakers to test our character set conversion features. Anyone willing to participate in that way would be most welcome. </P ></LI ><LI ><P >Canonical examples of using the each library would be very helpful to newcomers. </P ></LI ><LI ><P >An isql Perl and PHP would all make debugging and testing easier for everyone. </P ></LI ></UL > </P ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="SENDPATCH" >Send a patch</A ></H2 ><P >Good patches are nearly always applied in short order. Patches uploaded to <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=33106&atid=407808" TARGET="_top" >SourceForge</A > trigger automatic notification to the <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > mailing list. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="CORRECT" >Correct this User Guide</A ></H2 ><P >Any corrections or suggestions, be they typographical, grammatical, structural, factual, or mineral are most welcome. Please send it to <A HREF="mailto:jklowden@freetds.org" TARGET="_top" ><SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > FAQ Master</A >, or post a message to the list. </P ><P >The User Guide is maintained in <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >SGML</ACRONYM > DocBook format; the file in your distibution is <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >doc/userguide.sgml</TT >. It is a flat ASCII file that you can edit with any text editor. You don't have to know <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >SGML</ACRONYM > to correct or add to the User Guide, however. Just open it up, find the place you're interested in, and type away. Do a <B CLASS="COMMAND" >diff -u <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >old_version</I ></TT > <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >your_version</I ></TT ></B > and post your patch to the SourceForge site. Any errors or lackings in your markup will be graciously emended by yours truly. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="DOCUMENTAPI" >Document an <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >API</ACRONYM ></A ></H2 ><P >We have just begun an independent reference manual to <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN >; the main <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >API</ACRONYM > documents are the work of the server vendors. We're using <A HREF="http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/" TARGET="_top" >Doxygen</A >, which extracts documentation directly from comments in the source code, and we're maybe 25% done. </P ><P >The <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >TDS</ACRONYM > protocol is partly documented, as are the <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >API</ACRONYM >s to <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >libtds</TT > and <SPAN CLASS="SYSTEMITEM" >db-lib</SPAN >, but much remains. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="WEBMASTER" >Be the Webmaster</A ></H2 ><P >The FAQ and in particular the news don't get updated often enough. If that's your thing, drop a line to your friendly project maintainer, <A HREF="mailto:jklowden@freetds.org" TARGET="_top" >James K. Lowden</A >. </P ></DIV ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="askingforhelp.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.htm" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="advocacy.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >What to include when asking for help</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Advocacy</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >