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Readme for analog3.1

How to report bugs

I welcome mail about analog, both praise and bug reports! I am also usually happy to help people who have trouble with analog: it helps me to find bugs, and know where the documentation is unclear.

I get a lot of e-mail about analog, so I would appreciate it if you would do the following simple things before mailing me.

  1. Read the FAQ. Maybe I've answered your question already. If I have, I'll just direct you to the FAQ, not answer it again.
  2. Read the list of known bugs at my site, to see if your bug is already known about.
  3. Read the other relevant pages of the Readme, particularly the section on Starting to use analog, and the section on Errors and warnings if your question is about one of those. If your question is already answered on one of those pages, I'll just direct you to it, not answer the question again.
  4. If your question is "How do I do ... with analog" then don't ask it until you've read the whole of the section on Customising analog yourself, and still don't know how to do it. I don't appreciate people who are too lazy to read the documentation. (If the documentation is unclear, or the relevant paragraph is too well hidden, then that's a different matter. Of course I want to know about that.)
  5. If analog isn't doing what you thought you asked it to, then run it with the PRINTVARS ON configuration command, and see what options it thinks it's meant to be using.
  6. Describe exactly what you did, what you expected, and what the computer did. Include the exact text of any error messages, not a précis.
  7. Do not send long files or attachments unless I ask you to. I do not want to see your configuration file, your header file, your output file, or any logfile over 20 lines long. They are almost always useless to me.
  8. Include the word "analog" in the subject of your e-mail. That way it will end up in the right mailbox.

I'm sorry to be so fussy, but a lot of the mail I get really needn't have been sent at all. As I say, I really do welcome genuine mail. After all that, you can send your mail to sret1@cam.ac.uk.

There is also a mailing list for receiving news of updates to analog. To join that list, see the next section.


Stephen Turner
E-mail: sret1@cam.ac.uk

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