Posted by Sean Malloy-2 on Apr 27, 2004; 12:07am
URL: https://forum.world.st/What-has-happened-to-Dolphin-Harbour-tp3370442p3370450.html

> I remember being very impressed by Dolphin Harbor.  However I was not
really
> sure exactly what it was.  It looked like they were mostly oriented
towards
> Dolphin Internet technologies.  I wasn't sure if non Internet goodies
would
> fit there.

I think DH should be more of a allpackages welcome site. There needs to be
ONE site, which can either link to all other code, or keep a local copy of
it (with auth permissions). Fuck it, there isn't an up to date one. I'm
starting one.

> I never really got into the whole wiki thing, though I did recently try to
> add an ADO DB example without success.  I really like this newsgroup, and
I
> much prefer it to some kind of web board.  If you are into the web board
> thing then I suppose you could use Google
> http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin .  I use
> Google for all my Dolphin newsgroup searches.  I see very little spam in
> this group.  I use the free Usenet server here http://individual.net/ to
> read and post.

I don't care for wikis either, my point is only that the OA wiki is locked
down, and hasn't been updated for some time... Most news servers purge
messages after 30/X days. I only just discovere dthe totallyobjects.com news
server (which is also free), so I've started using that instead. It keeps
all of the posts, rtather than my ISP news server purging, which kind of
sucks. Threads start to go weird, people responding to non-existent
messages. Couple non-existent purged messages, with the legion of posts
about nude survivor pics, porn, and penis enlargment, and it can be painful
to find the new posts... example a:
news://news.totallyobjects.com/comp.lang.smallytalk.advocacy.

> I think OA does a _much_ better job of interfacing with the Smalltalk
> developer community than some Smalltalk vendors.  I suppose if one does
not
> find the newsgroup that may miss out on a lot.  I think the sense of
> community in this newsgroup is one of the greatest strengths of Dolphin.
> Some vendor's Smalltalk newsgroups feel very lonely.  I have seen an
> increase in new people posting latly, so I think Dolphin is getting more
> exposure.

Hey I am not having a go at the way the OA team help with requests, they're
quick to respond, and do it for free I might add. Hell, Andy even refunded
me my purchase of the basic edition for the pro edition, which he didn't
have to do. I'm just saying on the whole the news groups present a re-active
interaction. You ask a question, you get an answer (most of the time more
than one). I'm saying perhaps some Dolphin developers should be more
pro-active, and publish information, whether someone has asked or not. Know
what I mean?

> If you are talking about the help links from Dolphin going to broken pages
> then I think that really should be fixed, either in the distribution, or
on
> the web.  In general I think OA has a very nice web site.

Yes, if anyone at my company were evaluating Dolphin as a windows
development environment, and the first click to the help (and every click
there after) resulted in 404 errors, you would get the impression that
either a) the product is dead/dying, or b) that the product, like the help,
is full of bugs and problems (when it isn't!). Software is just like
cooking. Its all about presentation: "Who cares if its good if it doesn't
look good?" - I suggest to Andy, that they set up a generic page for all of
those help 404 pages which some how tries to handle the requests in a smart
way, and forward the browser request to information related to the context
of the request... The 404 error is just terrible... Admittedly, I don't see
the 404 error anymore, I installed the Dolphin 4 education centre, which
changes links to go to the HTML Help version.

> Well, there is the Dolphin web ring here
> http://l.webring.com/hub?ring=dolphinsmalltalk .  If you do a bit of
> googling you will find other sites.  Here is a nice list of links
> http://mypage.bluewin.ch/a.fischer/dolphinResource.html , perhaps a bit
old
> though.  I am not aware of anything quite like Dolphin Harbor.  It takes a
> lot of work to maintain a good living website.  It is difficult for me to
> even keep my little goodie site current.

yeah, I know it is difficult maintaining a site, and keeping it fresh. It is
hard work. DH has suffered the same fate as most other sites. Real life gets
in the way (I guess?)

Web rings be damned! :)