Dear Adam Baker and MarketCircle:

Posting "Forums - not for technical support!" in the "Extending Daylite/Scripting" forum seems a little unclear on the concept. MarketCircle has a monopoly on F-script knowledge. F-script is not widely known. In theory, you want people to use your software. Virtually noone but MarketCircle knows how to use F-script much less with Daylite, i.e., MarketCircle has a monopoly on that expertise.

So let me make sure I understand what you're saying and your intentions. You do not want to share your expertise even with simple answers to questions by users? You would prefer ambitious users do not get too ambitious by trying to script, and certainly not as well as MarketCircle experts? Expertise is proprietary, the scripting is for marketing feature list, but not for actual use by (non-internal MarketCircle) users?

I could go on. I have several basic questions that have been awaiting answer(s) for some time. It's irresponsible for MarketCircle not to have answered them in a timely fashion. If you want people to get excited by scripting your products, answer their questions daily, in a friendly and supportive fashion, and go a little beyond by proactively offering further insights so people "get it". That takes a part time commitment from a friendly engineer who is expert in F-script.

What you did: nothing for a day, nothing for days, nothing for weeks, nothing for months. Oh wait, you posted the drivel in "Forums - not for technical support!" You're kidding right? I don't think bootstrapping Scripting expertise is reasonable without MarketCircle support. (In fact, I guarantee you will not get critical mass with your "Forums - not for technical support!" attitude.)

IMO, you need to assign a friendly and well-written engineer to this forum to build scripting expertise, otherwise your F-script is basically for in-house use only.

Adam Baker, if you want to support this forum ("Extending Daylite/Scripting"), please get a friendly engineer. Otherwise, please find someone else who is willing to get the support this forum needs.

2c,

= Joe =

Joe

If you had bothered to look you’d have seen that F-script is an open-source scripting language for OS X that Marketcircle uses. It is not their technology.

See the F-Script website for plenty of support material on the general syntax, etc.

I'd agree that Daylite-specific information is sparse, but that's because for 99% of users I imagine the built-in functionality of the product is enough. If your needs involve F-script you are obviously a power-user, and should be prepared to pay for that level of information, which—on a ROI basis—any software company would be hard-pressed to provide gratis.

Marketcircle have plenty of other avenues for support (both paid and not) listed under the support tab, and are surprisingly active here in the forums given they are specifically for user-to-user support. In fact, the staff at Marketcircle have offered more support than any other software company whose products I have used.

Before criticizing Marketcircle so venomously and publicly I suggest you take a deep breath and consider your complaint within the big picture of limited resources and Marketcircle’s stated priorities.

My 2c (and not talking for Marketcircle in any way, of course)

Hi Joseph

Thanks for your comments. I'll respond:

quote:

Posting "Forums - not for technical support!" in the "Extending Daylite/Scripting" forum seems a little unclear on the concept.

We posted this in all of our forums as a "sticky" to let people know that if they are expecting technical support here, it's not the avenue that we provide for that. It describes the forums as a community user-to-user facility.

quote:

You do not want to share your expertise even with simple answers to questions by users? You would prefer ambitious users do not get too ambitious by trying to script, and certainly not as well as MarketCircle experts?

This is not the case, nor did I suggest that. I believe the inference isn't accurate; we DO want to share our expertise, and moreso, we want our users to share their expertise, and we do when we can. However, we can't always answer every question. We try when we can, but these forums are for users to connect with each other. Further, a fair number of our users have a good bit of F-Script expertise.

quote:

I have several basic questions that have been awaiting answer(s) for some time. It's irresponsible for MarketCircle not to have answered them in a timely fashion.

We don't claim, advertise, or suggest that we monitor these forums to answer questions in a timely fashion. I don't understand why you think it's irresponsible for us not to have answered. I'm sorry that your questions haven't been addressed, but I can't tell you why other users haven't answered them.

quote:

"Forums - not for technical support!" You're kidding right?

That's not what these forums are for. They are for users to communicate with one another, sharing tips and helping each other out. We have free technical support, which I would recommend you avail yourself of. One of our support specialists happens to know a fair bit about F-Script, and we have a specific process for dealing with support inquiries. It helps when we can use these forums for a certain purpose, and users can help one another, and we can effectively use our time to deal with technical support issues quickly and do it well.

I understand your frustration, but I disagree that anything we have done is irresponsible. In fact, I would say that these forums are an excellent resource, even without our periodic answers--our users are full of great ideas have lots of expertise. Setting up these forums, and designing them in such a way that they are mostly self-sufficient, while streamlining our free by-email technical support process and adding a specialist whose primary area of expertise is reporting, has been a good thing.

Thanks,

Dear Andy Warwick:

> If you had bothered to look you’d have seen that F-script is an open-source scripting language for OS X that Marketcircle uses. It is not their technology.

Yes, I do know already. My comments and opinions stand as is.

Cheers,

= Joe =

Dear Adam/MarketCircle:

Thank you for your point by point response.

To get back to my point, I believe this forum is dead. I have had at least one open, simple question awaiting an answer for some time. The only reason I would learn F-Script is for Daylite (which is a stretch of a reason). Noone (not Market Circle, nor any user) has answered my question. It's been so long, I don't even remember what the question is! In other words, the concept of user-to-user support is not working.

How would it work?

You need critical mass. You need a forum people can look to for answers. Many of your forums have that. Scripting is hard-core. It does not have that. I believe MC needs to put in the support work to get the expertise in Scripting running so there _could_ be user-to-user support.

This forum is different than all other forums. I know you have expertise in house because I met some knowledgeable and really friendly engineers at WWDC last year. However, none of those people (noone basically) seems to be on this forum to answer even the most basic jumpstart questions.

That's why my post is about being clear-on-concept. You need to commit to get this forum running long enough to attract the genuine experts who will program, not just user "pro"s who may or may not program for a living. And you need to do it to attract programmers who wouldn't bother with F-Script except for Daylite. (Switch to Ruby, and the critical mass threshold may reduce, but that's probably not in the cards.)

Thank you for your reasoned response. However, the basic imbalance and impediments in this forum continue to exist, regardless of successful forum critical mass in other forums.

= Joe =

Joe

Just to be clear, you know that F-script is a third-party product, and you stand by your statements; statements such as:

quote:

MarketCircle has a monopoly on F-script knowledge.

quote:

F-script is not widely known.

quote:

Virtually noone but MarketCircle knows how to use F-script…

quote:

your F-script is basically for in-house use only.

One can only assume, therefore, you are talking specifically about F-script and its implementation details regards Marketcircle’s products?

That is certainly not implied or stated anywhere in your original post, which gives the very strong impression that you believe F-script is a Marketcircle-only ‘product’, especially when using words such as ‘monopoly’ and ‘in-house’, and that no one outside Marketcircle’s hallowed walls has any clue how to use it.

They strike me as weaselly words at the very best, to shore up an argument that holds little water given that at no point has Marketcircle ever said that the forums were an official support channel, whatever you might like to believe or think appropriate.

Your most recent post, at least, has a better argument, and one which I partly agree with. Daylite’s scripting documentation is somewhat lacking. But I don’t expect that situation to improve short-term at the expense of more suitable areas for attention within the apps and their support, and I certainly don’t believe Marketcircle has an obligation to do anything in the forums in the way you describe.

They certainly haven't broken any promises about the role of the forums—explicit or implied—and it’s disingenuous at best to imply that is the case with such statements as

quote:

What you did: nothing for a day, nothing for days, nothing for weeks, nothing for months. Oh wait, you posted the drivel in "Forums - not for technical support!" You're kidding right?

I think we can agree that some more support in this area would be nice, but I have to take issue with your notion that the forums (or rather, this specific forum) is the place to do it, and simply because your own question hasn’t been answered you are ‘owed’ a level of support that has never been offered.

quote:

It's irresponsible for MarketCircle not to have answered them in a timely fashion.

Perhaps if you hadn’t been so confrontational, and simply re-asked the question, pointing out that you hadn’t yet had an answer, someone from Marketcircle might have jumped in, as they often do.

The problem now is that if one of the engineers does answer your original question, it appears that complaining at loud volume gets results, and—like Pavlov’s dogs—we are going to see the forums’ quality go down as new users arrive with expectations of direct support via this channel, and if they don’t get it quickly resort to whining and yelling until they do. That’s a dangerous precedent to set, and why Adam posted “Forums - not for technical support!”; to police the misguided impression that this is a support channel, and not to specifically hack you off.

For what it’s worth if I knew how to solve your issue, and saw your post, I would have helped; and still would if I knew an answer.

Andy:

> One can only assume, therefore, you are talking specifically about F-script and its implementation details regards Marketcircle’s products?

Thank you for clarifying and correcting an oversight in my original post. I know F-Script is third party, and also largely unknown with little prospect of popular usage. The only reason I have to learn it is Daylite, and assume such for other Daylite users. Too many other scripting languages have growing popularity (e.g., Ruby).

Also thank you for acknowledging some validity to the issue(s) I have raised. More support would be appreciated and, I believe, both essential to this particular forum and necessary for user F-Script to reach critical mass for self-support and growth.

Finally, thank you for your polite, well spoken response(s).

= Joe =

quote:

Thank you for clarifying and correcting an oversight in my original post.

My pleasure; it certainly helps when we are all on the same page.

quote:

Too many other scripting languages have growing popularity (e.g., Ruby).

While I have only had a cursory look at Ruby and F-script, it strikes me that they are used for (and aimed at) very different markets and functions. I have no doubt that Ruby’s recent rise in interest is solely down to Ruby on Rails, and therefore it’s focus—whether justified or not—is web scripting rather than application scripting which, from my own impressions at least, seems to be better handled with F-script (at least on the OSX platform).

They are, I hasten to add, only initial impressions from a position of fairly high ignorance, as I already have far too many other scripting languages getting the lion’s share of my focus right now (PHP and FileMaker scripting mainly*; I fondly remember the days where you could count scripting languages on one hand /sigh).

I have got Ruby and Python books on my bookshelf and haven’t even broken the spines on them yet, despite them being there for 6 months plus.

Scripting Daylite is (by it’s nature) not mainstream and does need some more support, but I doubt anything Marketcircle could do in this forum could change that, at least short term.

I still have a suspicion that there simply aren’t that many people doing it as a percentage of the user-base, and we will probably see 3rd party partners offering it as a paid-for support service going forward, rather than the vast majority of the user-base being inclined (able?) to do it themselves. Something more like Lotus Notes, where 3rd party implementors do bespoke development on the ‘platform’, rather than boxed-product consumers doing it themselves.

quote:

Finally, thank you for your polite, well spoken response(s).

Pleasure. I try very hard to make any criticism I raise as targeted at the argument, rather than the individual. I am gratified that you haven’t taken offence at my posts, as none was intended.

(* Perhaps with a smattering of LOLCODE.)