[Typo3] Helping new users - was [menu item image gets cut off or truncated]

[Vincent]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 11:17:52AM -0700, Christopher wrote:
> On 21/10/05, Vincent <typo3 at crel.us> wrote:
> 
> > >
> > > >When it does not appear that the community is willing to spend 2 or
> > > >3 minutes to save a newbie days, it makes one concerned that they are
> > > >going to be ignored and completely on their own if they choose typo3 and
> > > >have a show stopping problem that they cannot solve on their own.
> > > >
> 
> I'd like to remind you that four separate people answered your thread
> and suggested solutions. Just because nobody was actually able to
> _solve_ your problem doesn't mean that no one is "...willing to spend
> 2 or 3 minutes..." to help or that you're being "ignored". I think
> that's actually a pretty dishonest characterization of the response to
> your question.

Yes, I did get several responses to other problems and I apologize if
I made it sound as though I was not giving those people credit for
attempting to help even though the problems were not solved.

However, if you will notice in my posting, I was referring to my
questions about how to use the static templates in which I never got
a reply.  That was something that would have been a quick answer
referring me to the correct area of documentation that ended up taking
me days to find on my own.

Even though I very much appreciate the efforts of those who have
attempted to help with some of the problems, it still does not change
the fact that there apparently is a problem with lack of response in
general as testified by Alex Heizer when he said
"I agree. That's why I stopped asking questions on the mailing list about
 2 years ago..."

I have seen comments indicating the community would like to know why
typo3 is not more prevalent than it is and would like to know some of
the reasons when users choose not to use it.  So, I offered feedback
from a new users perspective and experiences.


> I'd also like to point out that Typo3 is complex enough that without
> having access to the BE of a site in question, it's sometimes
> _extremely_ dfficult to pin down where a the source of a problem
> actually lies. I've never had _any_ problem like the one you
> encountered with the GIFBUILDER object and maybe neither had anyone
> else who read your message; does this indicate some kind of systemic
> problem with the community?

If anybody had asked, I would have given them backend access to help
solve the problem.  As I mentioned in the postings, it was just
a quickstart installation that I was learning from.  No critical data to
be concerned about.

So far as the menu item images getting truncated (GIFBUILDER problem),
Mike Meir was apparently able to reproduce it and was helpful in giving
me a constant setting that worked around it with at least one of the
templates (which I did appreciate very much).  Not only that, I had the
same problem on Linux (at my hosting site) as well as on NetBSD (my
local machine).  Two completely different installations with different
binaries and different versions of some of the supporting software.

So, it seemed unlikely that others were not experiencing the same
problem and I was expecting a little more of a response from the
community on that one, but as I mentioned above, these were not the
issues I was referring to since I did get some attempts to help on them.