Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
bit of time working through things yourself and reading the documen-
tation. Some of the support channels you can use are as follows:
• Mailing lists
• Forums
• IRC (a real-time service that allows you to chat with people across
the globe)
• Wikis
• Search engines
• Websites
When using mailing lists for support, you need to be sure to search the
archives before posting your question. Quite often the answer to your
question will be waiting for you to discover it. In addition to the archives
typically maintained by each mailing list, a couple of other independent
archives are quite useful: Nabble
1
and Gmane.
2
If the archives don't
provide the answer, compose an email to the list, and make sure you
include enough information so the group can provide an answer. Keep
in mind that most email lists require you to subscribe before you can
post a question.
Many people prefer forums for support. Many OSGIS projects have a
forum linked to their website. These can be a valuable source of infor-
mation and are usually searchable. Here you can find users helping
users, as well as information from the project members.
Sometimes nothing beats real-time support like you can get on IRC.
Many projects maintain a presence on IRC. For example, at any one
time on irc.freenode.net you might find the following channels: #grass,
#postgis, #gdal, #mapserver, and #qgis. If you don't know what those
projects are, never fear. We cover most of these in our survey of OSGIS
IRC has its own unique culture as does each channel. Probably the
key thing to remember, apart from doing your homework first, is that
people on IRC are almost always doing something else at the same
time. If you ask a question and nobody answers, it means one of several
things. First, nobody is around who knows the answer. People who can't
help you often aren't compelled to tell you. Second, the people who do
know the answer may be busy at the moment and haven't seen your
1.
2.
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