Re: NetBeans Contribution: Form-Enabled JCA

Chris Nielsen wrote:
> Based on some digging I did, the form-based JCA should work with Acrobat
> Reader 5.x and later, across all platforms.  (Acrobat reports that both the
> original PDF, as well as my modified version, conform to PDF version 1.4.
> Apparently the latter corresponds to Acrobat 5.x and later.)

Sounds fine, thanks for checking up.

> So we can either provide both JCA versions, or require the form-based
> version to be electronically filled in (with the caveat that Acrobat Reader
> is required).  Whatever the decision, you folks have my full support.

Well non-form capable readers can still view the PDF, so no
reason they can't just print it out and hand-fill, as they
currently do ...

I've got approval to go ahead with this, so I just put it up,
and added some notes about the forms aspect to the site
(changes will propagate in ~1hr).  All seems to be workign
fine - thank you Chris!

> On a final note, if you folks are aware of any NetBeans areas that could use
> additional resources, let me know.  I volunteered my time on the 'nbdev'
> mailing list a few weeks ago (see attached), but have gotten no responses
> yet.  Perhaps folks a) think I'm crazy, b) are too engrossed in development
> to consider the offer, or a combination.  Nonetheless, the offer stands.

:-( :-(  I am very sorry to hear this.  There are real
barriers to contributing development-wise.  I've forwarded
on your msg to management and will (again!) try and push
for some action.  I proposed some time ago that develpers
try to identify quick-fix issues in the bug DB, those that
newcomers could tackle and solve ... there was no real
response to that but I'll try to re-open it.

In the meantime, Rob suggested a few ways you could
contribute marketing and web-wise.  If you are interested
in that, any of the things Rob suggested would be very
welcome.

Being a webmaster, I'm particularly keen on fresh content -
articles, HOWTOs, tutorials, that kind of thing.  I learned
everything I know about PHP, MySQL, perl etc from reading
2-3 page articles about building some small, specific, but
functioning application, so I've always thought those kind
of docs about NetBeans would be great.  If you can think of
some small-ish project that a newcomer could build in NB,
and fancy writing notes about how you did it, I could put
it up on the site ... if you'd rather not mess about with
HTML etc, just send in your notes and a few screenshots, we
can html-ise it on this end.

Anyway, just a suggestion.  As Rob says, you probably have
your own ideas of things you might like to do, feel free to
ignore these ideas if they don't appeal :-)

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,
-- 
Jack Catchpoole
NetBeans/Sun Microsystems
http://www.netbeans.org/