A community also falls apart when the elite patronise the ordinary member - I refer you to the outcome of a certain recent election .......
The user who reports problems with the miktex system helps the community too. It is only when people use software that bugs and problems become apparent. But if users feel talked down to or patronised then they stop bothering to report or share bugs for fear of being talked down to or made to look stupid. Then everyone loses. By treating lesser miktex using mortals with more respect when asking them for more feedback on the problem they have found then you may find them more forthcoming with the information they provide and more likely to contribute better in the future.
Just saying, sometimes you get more out of people through mutual respect. I am not pointing a finger at anyone specific, just making a general point about how a community can best operate.
On 9 Nov 2016, at 23:52, "George N. White III" <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Taylor, Robert <***@essex.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> I must say I don't think some of the "holier than thou" responses that
>> Evan has received speak all that well of a friendly and cohesive community,
>> regardless of any (highly dubious) allusions to moral behaviour. Most
>> people want to use miktex like they do their car - they'd like it work
>> without having to know how the things under the bonnet work. They will
>> welcome the help of this on-line support community (which contains many
>> people who are very experienced about miktex and are supremely kind enough
>> to help others with their problems) when things go wrong. But, similarly
>> to when one has one's car repaired, you prefer that the mechanic does not
>> give you a lecture for how little you know about your car's working parts!!
>>
>
> Mechanics get paid to fix your car. A community falls apart if there are
> too many people asking others to do work without contributing to the
> effort. There is very little money supporting TeX, so while it would be
> nice if others would fix our problems for us, the reality is that everyone
> who relies on TeX needs to a) contribute what they can and b) put some
> effort into learning how to contribute more over time.
> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html is a useful guide for
> people reporting bugs.
>
>
>> Best wishes,
>> Rob
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Evan Cooch [mailto:***@gmail.com]
>>> Sent: 09 November 2016 14:31
>>> To: A place for MiKTeX users to discuss MiKTeX related questions.
>>> Subject: Re: [MiKTeX] yap error
>>>
>>> So, if I'd known about setting --trace when starting yap, it would have
>>> provided further information. Thanks for the tip. I'll have to see if I
>> can find
>>> the technical docs that explain this more fully.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, being chastised for failing to use a feature I wasn't
>> aware
>>> of does very little to help, other than perhaps make you feel morally
>>> superior (since you brought up morality -- really, its a morality
>> issue?),
>>> despite the fact I make $$$ donations to MikTeX on an annual basis (which
>>> I'm not morally obligated to do).
>>>
>>> Now that we confounded morality with financials and technical insights,
>> lets
>>> move on. If you want a mea culpa then fine.
>>>
>>>> Not at all. Think about the many other MiKTeX users who are going to
>>>> encounter the same issue today and will be goggling "yap internal
>> error".
>>>>
>>>> Your "solution" is not a good one. The "internal error" message is a
>>>> bug in yap. Using "yap --trace--<traceflags>" could have provided
>>>> information needed to fix the bug yesterday.
>>>>
>>>> In fact, the bug appears to be caused by missing modes.mf,
>>>> provided by the metafont package. Perhaps yap should revert
>>>> to dvips rendering if metafont is not available (in which case it does
>>>> not make sense to make the yap package depend on metafont).
>>>>
>>>> Just because you aren't obliged to contribute financially to MiKTeX
>>>> doesn't free you of a moral obligation to the community. A small
>>>> extra effort on your part could potentially save many others from
>>>> wasting time.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 11/09/2016 04:07 AM, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
>>>>>> Am Tue, 8 Nov 2016 10:53:22 -0500 schrieb Evan Cooch:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sure, but when the error message is simply 'internal error', there
>>>>>>> isn't much to report that would be of value, is there? ;-)
>>>>>> The information "internal error" excludes some other possible error
>>>>>> messages (like e.g. a ghostscript error due to a wrong renderer
>>>>>> method).
>>
>
> --
> George N. White III <***@chebucto.ns.ca>
> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
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