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>FreeTDS</SPAN
> User Guide: A Guide to Installing, Configuring, and Running <SPAN
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>FreeTDS</SPAN
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><A
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>Chapter 10. Helping</H1
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><TD
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>&nbsp;</TD
><TD
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ALIGN="LEFT"
VALIGN="TOP"
><I
><P
><I
>The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.</I
></P
></I
></TD
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><TR
><TD
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>&nbsp;</TD
><TD
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><I
><SPAN
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>Bertrand Russell</SPAN
></I
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><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="light.taper.htm"
>Light another's taper</A
></DT
><DT
><A
HREF="ambition.htm"
>Ambitious ideas</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&#38;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-Library</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
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