[vorbis-dev] Documentation gripes

[Borgerding, Mark A.]

I have been a member of the mailing list for a couple months now.  I have
not contributed anything because it has been difficult to gain a toehold
from which I could really understand the concepts used in Ogg Vorbis.

I would like to help out, but it is hard to get an idea of the overall
architecture with docs like http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/vorbis.html ,
in which every link is dead. I'm not trying to point fingers or to say that
it is bad documentation, it is just incomplete.  The READMEs and doc/*
included in the distribution offer little help with regard to the underlying
principles.

I understand that many of you already know a great deal about the inner
workings of Ogg Vorbis. I do not nor do I know where to look to get such an
understanding. 

I'm a good C/C++ coder with an MSEE concentration in DSP.  I'd like to
contribute to Ogg Vorbis, but so far I have not been able to motivate myself
to spend hours looking through the code, just to get an overview of the
technologies used.

I wonder how many more people there are like me who are waiting in the
wings; who'd like to contribute as a hobby, but can't devote 20 hours a week
to the cause.

Aside about the install:
It took me a couple of hours just to get to the point where I could record
and play a vorbis file on my linux box.  That time could've been much better
spent looking at the code, rather than wrestling with libraries and paths (I
had to comment out some stuff that used esd if I remember correctly.)

Of course it would be nice to have an install script do everything, but
lacking that, a README that dealt with some of the common issues would do.

I'm sorry if I have offended anyone.  That was not my intent.  I just wanted
to express my frustration at not being able to help out very easily.

Mark Borgerding 
markab (at) xetron . com
Software Engineer
Xetron Corporation
 


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