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1 | \versionid $Id: feedback.but,v 1.4 2002/04/27 16:20:16 simon Exp $ |
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2 | |
3 | \A{feedback} Feedback and bug reporting |
4 | |
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5 | This is a guide to providing feedback to the PuTTY development team. |
6 | It is provided as both a web page on the PuTTY site, and an appendix |
7 | in the PuTTY manual. |
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8 | |
9 | \K{feedback-general} gives some general guidelines for sending any |
10 | kind of e-mail to the development team. Following sections give more |
11 | specific guidelines for particular types of e-mail, such as bug |
12 | reports and feature requests. |
13 | |
14 | \H{feedback-general} General guidelines |
15 | |
16 | The PuTTY development team gets a \e{lot} of mail. If you can |
17 | possibly solve your own problem by reading the manual, reading the |
18 | FAQ, reading the web site, asking a fellow user, perhaps posting on |
19 | the newsgroup \W{news:comp.security.ssh}\c{comp.security.ssh}, or |
20 | some other means, then it would make our lives much easier. |
21 | |
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22 | We get so much e-mail that we literally do not have time to answer |
23 | it all. We regret this, but there's nothing we can do about it. So |
24 | if you can \e{possibly} avoid sending mail to the PuTTY team, we |
25 | recommend you do so. In particular, support requests |
26 | (\k{feedback-support}) are probably better sent to |
27 | \W{news:comp.security.ssh}\c{comp.security.ssh} or passed to a local |
28 | expert if possible. |
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29 | |
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30 | The PuTTY contact email address is a mailing list. For this reason, |
31 | e-mails larger than 40Kb will be held for inspection by the list |
32 | administrator, and will not be allowed through unless they really |
33 | appear to be worth their large size. Therefore: |
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34 | |
35 | \b Don't send your bug report as a Word document. Word documents are |
36 | roughly fifty times larger than writing the same report in plain |
37 | text. In addition, most of the PuTTY team read their e-mail on Unix |
38 | machines, so copying the attachment to a Windows box to run Word is |
39 | very inconvenient. Not only that, but several of us don't even |
40 | \e{have} a copy of Word! |
41 | |
42 | \b Don't mail large screen shots without checking with us first. |
43 | Sending a screen shot of an error box is almost certainly |
44 | unnecessary when you could just tell us in plain text what the error |
45 | was. Sending a full-screen shot is sometimes useful, but it's |
46 | probably still wise to check with us before sending it. |
47 | |
48 | \b If you want to send us a screen shot, or any other kind of large |
49 | data file, it is much more convenient for us if you can put the file |
50 | on a web site and send us the URL. That way (a) we don't have to |
51 | download it at all if it doesn't look necessary; and (b) only one |
52 | member of the team needs to download it, instead of it being |
53 | automatically sent to everyone on the mailing list. |
54 | |
55 | \b If you \e{must} mail a screen shot, don't send it as a \cw{.BMP} |
56 | file. \cw{BMP}s have no compression and they are \e{much} larger |
57 | than other image formats such as PNG, TIFF and GIF. Convert the file |
58 | to a properly compressed image format before sending it. |
59 | |
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60 | (Note that although the PuTTY contact address is a mailing list, the |
61 | archives aren't publicly available, so you shouldn't be letting |
62 | yourself in for any spam by sending us mail.) |
63 | |
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64 | \H{feedback-bugs} Reporting bugs |
65 | |
66 | If you think you have found a bug in PuTTY, your first steps should |
67 | be: |
68 | |
69 | \b Check the |
70 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist.html}{Wishlist |
71 | page} on the PuTTY website, and see if we already know about the |
72 | problem. If we do, it is almost certainly not necessary to mail us |
73 | about it, unless you think you have extra information that might be |
74 | helpful to us in fixing it. (Of course, if we actually \e{need} |
75 | specific extra information about a particular bug, the Wishlist page |
76 | will say so.) |
77 | |
78 | \b Check the |
79 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html}{Change |
80 | Log} on the PuTTY website, and see if we have already fixed the bug |
81 | in the development snapshots. |
82 | |
83 | \b Check the |
84 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html}{FAQ} |
85 | on the PuTTY website (also provided as \k{faq} in the manual), and |
86 | see if it answers your question. The FAQ lists the most common |
87 | things which people think are bugs, but which aren't bugs. |
88 | |
89 | \b Download the latest development snapshot and see if the problem |
90 | still happens with that. This really is worth doing. As a general |
91 | rule we aren't very interested in bugs that appear in the release |
92 | version but not in the development version, because that usually |
93 | means they are bugs we have \e{already fixed}. On the other hand, if |
94 | you can find a bug in the development version that doesn't appear in |
95 | the release, that's likely to be a new bug we've introduced since |
96 | the release and we're definitely interested in it. |
97 | |
98 | If none of those options solved your problem, and you still need to |
99 | report a bug to us, it is useful if you include some general |
100 | information: |
101 | |
102 | \b Tell us what version of PuTTY you are running. To find this out, |
103 | use the "About PuTTY" option from the System menu. Please \e{do not} |
104 | just tell us \q{I'm running the latest version}; e-mail can be |
105 | delayed and it may not be obvious which version was the latest at |
106 | the time you sent the message. |
107 | |
108 | \b Tell us what version of what OS you are running PuTTY on. |
109 | |
110 | \b Tell us what protocol you are connecting with: SSH, Telnet, |
111 | Rlogin or Raw mode. |
112 | |
113 | \b Tell us what kind of server you are connecting to; what OS, and |
114 | if possible what SSH server (if you're using SSH). You can get some |
115 | of this information from the PuTTY Event Log (see \k{using-eventlog} |
116 | in the manual). |
117 | |
118 | \b Send us the contents of the PuTTY Event Log, unless you |
119 | have a specific reason not to (for example, if it contains |
120 | confidential information that you think we should be able to solve |
121 | your problem without needing to know). |
122 | |
123 | \b Try to give us as much information as you can to help us |
124 | see the problem for ourselves. If possible, give us a step-by-step |
125 | sequence of \e{precise} instructions for reproducing the fault. |
126 | |
127 | \b Don't just tell us that PuTTY \q{does the wrong thing}; tell us |
128 | exactly and precisely what it did, and also tell us exactly and |
129 | precisely what you think it should have done instead. Some people |
130 | tell us PuTTY does the wrong thing, and it turns out that it was |
131 | doing the right thing and their expectations were wrong. Help to |
132 | avoid this problem by telling us exactly what you think it should |
133 | have done, and exactly what it did do. |
134 | |
135 | \b If you think you can, you're welcome to try to fix the problem |
136 | yourself. A patch to the code which fixes a bug is an excellent |
137 | addition to a bug report. However, a patch is never a \e{substitute} |
138 | for a good bug report; if your patch is wrong or inappropriate, and |
139 | you haven't supplied us with full information about the actual bug, |
140 | then we won't be able to find a better solution. |
141 | |
142 | \b |
143 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html}\cw{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html} |
144 | is an article on how to report bugs effectively in general. If your |
145 | bug report is \e{particularly} unclear, we may ask you to go away, |
146 | read this article, and then report the bug again. |
147 | |
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148 | It is reasonable to report bugs in PuTTY's documentation, if you |
149 | think the documentation is unclear or unhelpful. But we do need to |
150 | be given exact details of \e{what} you think the documentation has |
151 | failed to tell you, or \e{how} you think it could be made clearer. |
152 | If your problem is simply that you don't \e{understand} the |
153 | documentation, we suggest posting to the newsgroup |
154 | \W{news:comp.security.ssh}\c{comp.security.ssh} and see if someone |
155 | will explain what you need to know. \e{Then}, if you think the |
156 | documentation could usefully have told you that, send us a bug |
157 | report and explain how you think we should change it. |
158 | |
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159 | \H{feedback-features} Requesting extra features |
160 | |
161 | If you want to request a new feature in PuTTY, the very first things |
162 | you should do are: |
163 | |
164 | \b Check the |
165 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist.html}{Wishlist |
166 | page} on the PuTTY website, and see if your feature is already on |
167 | the list. If it is, it probably won't achieve very much to repeat |
168 | the request. (But see \k{feedback-feature-priority} if you want to |
169 | persuade us to give your particular feature higher priority.) |
170 | |
171 | \b Check the |
172 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html}{Change |
173 | Log} on the PuTTY website, and see if we have already added your |
174 | feature in the development snapshots. If it isn't clear, download |
175 | the latest development snapshot and see if the feature is present. |
176 | If it is, then it will also be in the next release and there is no |
177 | need to mail us at all. |
178 | |
179 | If you can't find your feature in either the development snapshots |
180 | \e{or} the Wishlist, then you probably do need to submit a feature |
181 | request. Since the PuTTY authors are very busy, it helps if you try |
182 | to do some of the work for us: |
183 | |
184 | \b Do as much of the design as you can. Think about \q{corner |
185 | cases}; think about how your feature interacts with other existing |
186 | features. Think about the user interface; if you can't come up with |
187 | a simple and intuitive interface to your feature, you shouldn't be |
188 | surprised if we can't either. Always imagine whether it's possible |
189 | for there to be more than one, or less than one, of something you'd |
190 | assumed there would be one of. (For example, if you were to want |
191 | PuTTY to put an icon in the System tray rather than the Taskbar, you |
192 | should think about what happens if there's more than one PuTTY |
193 | active; how would the user tell which was which?) |
194 | |
195 | \b If you can program, it may be worth offering to write the feature |
196 | yourself and send us a patch. However, it is likely to be helpful |
197 | if you confer with us first; there may be design issues you haven't |
198 | thought of, or we may be about to make big changes to the code which |
199 | your patch would clash with, or something. If you check with the |
200 | maintainers first, there is a better chance of your code actually |
201 | being usable. |
202 | |
203 | \H{feedback-feature-priority} Requesting features that have already |
204 | been requested |
205 | |
206 | If a feature is already listed on the Wishlist, then it usually |
207 | means we would like to add it to PuTTY at some point. However, this |
208 | may not be in the near future. If there's a feature on the Wishlist |
209 | which you would like to see in the \e{near} future, there are |
210 | several things you can do to try to increase its priority level: |
211 | |
212 | \b Mail us and vote for it. (Be sure to mention that you've seen it |
213 | on the Wishlist, or we might think you haven't even \e{read} the |
214 | Wishlist). This probably won't have very \e{much} effect; if a huge |
215 | number of people vote for something then it may make a difference, |
216 | but one or two extra votes for a particular feature are unlikely to |
217 | change our priority list immediately. Also, don't expect a reply. |
218 | |
219 | \b Offer us money if we do the work sooner rather than later. This |
220 | sometimes works, but not always. The PuTTY team all have full-time |
221 | jobs and we're doing all of this work in our free time; we may |
222 | sometimes be willing to give up some more of our free time in |
223 | exchange for some money, but if you try to bribe us for a \e{big} |
224 | feature it's entirely possible that we simply won't have the time to |
225 | spare - whether you pay us or not. (Also, we don't accept bribes to |
226 | add \e{bad} features to the Wishlist, because our desire to provide |
227 | high-quality software to the users comes first.) |
228 | |
229 | \b Offer to help us write the code. This is probably the \e{only} |
230 | way to get a feature implemented quickly, if it's a big one that we |
231 | don't have time to do ourselves. |
232 | |
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233 | \H{feedback-support} Support requests |
234 | |
235 | If you're trying to make PuTTY do something for you and it isn't |
236 | working, but you're not sure whether it's a bug or not, then |
237 | \e{please} consider looking for help somewhere else. This is one of |
238 | the most common types of mail the PuTTY team receives, and we simply |
239 | don't have time to answer all the questions. Questions of this type |
240 | include: |
241 | |
242 | \b If you want to do something with PuTTY but have no idea where to |
243 | start, and reading the manual hasn't helped, try posting to the |
244 | newsgroup \W{news:comp.security.ssh}\c{comp.security.ssh} and see if |
245 | someone can explain it to you. |
246 | |
247 | \b If you have tried to do something with PuTTY but it hasn't |
248 | worked, and you aren't sure whether it's a bug in PuTTY or a bug in |
249 | your SSH server or simply that you're not doing it right, then try |
250 | posting to \W{news:comp.security.ssh}\c{comp.security.ssh} and see |
251 | if someone can solve your problem. Or try doing the same thing with |
252 | a different SSH client and see if it works with that. Please do not |
253 | report it as a PuTTY bug unless you are really sure it \e{is} a bug |
254 | in PuTTY. |
255 | |
256 | \b If you have successfully made a connection to your server and now |
257 | need to know what to type at the server's command prompt, or other |
258 | details of how to use the server-end software, talk to your server's |
259 | system administrator. This is not the PuTTY team's problem. PuTTY is |
260 | only a communications tool, like a telephone; if you can't speak the |
261 | same language as the person at the other end of the phone, it isn't |
262 | the telephone company's job to teach it to you. |
263 | |
264 | If you absolutely cannot get a support question answered any other |
265 | way, you can try mailing it to us, but we can't guarantee to have |
266 | time to answer it. |
267 | |
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268 | \H{feedback-webadmin} Web server administration |
269 | |
270 | If the PuTTY web site is down (Connection Timed Out), please don't |
271 | bother mailing us to tell us about it. Most of us read our e-mail on |
272 | the same machines that host the web site, so if those machines are |
273 | down then we will notice \e{before} we read our e-mail. So there's |
274 | no point telling us our servers are down. |
275 | |
276 | Of course, if the web site has some other error (Connection Refused, |
277 | 404 Not Found, 403 Forbidden, or something else) then we might |
278 | \e{not} have noticed and it might still be worth telling us about it. |
279 | |
280 | \H{feedback-permission} Asking permission for things |
281 | |
282 | PuTTY is distributed under the MIT Licence (see \k{licence} for |
283 | details). This means you can do almost \e{anything} you like with |
284 | our software, our source code, and our documentation. The only |
285 | things you aren't allowed to do are to remove our copyright notices |
286 | or the licence text itself, or to hold us legally responsible if |
287 | something goes wrong. |
288 | |
289 | So if you want permission to include PuTTY on a magazine cover disk, |
290 | or as part of a collection of useful software on a CD or a web site, |
291 | then \e{permission is already granted}. You don't have to mail us |
292 | and ask. Just go ahead and do it. We don't mind. |
293 | |
294 | If you want to use parts of the PuTTY source code in another |
295 | program, then it might be worth mailing us to talk about technical |
296 | details, but if all you want is to ask permission then you don't |
297 | need to bother. You already have permission. |
298 | |
299 | \H{feedback-mirrors} Mirroring the PuTTY web site |
300 | |
301 | All mirrors of the PuTTY web site are welcome. Please don't bother |
302 | asking us for permission before setting up a mirror. You already |
303 | have permission. We are always happy to have more mirrors. |
304 | |
305 | If you mail us \e{after} you have set up the mirror, and remember to |
306 | let us know which country your mirror is in, then we'll add it to |
307 | the |
308 | \W{http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/mirrors.html}{Mirrors |
309 | page} on the PuTTY website. |
310 | |
311 | If you have technical questions about the process of mirroring, then |
312 | you might want to mail us before setting up the mirror; but if you |
313 | just want to ask for permission, you don't need to. You already have |
314 | permission. |
315 | |
316 | \H{feedback-compliments} Praise and compliments |
317 | |
318 | One of the most rewarding things about maintaining free software is |
319 | getting e-mails that just say \q{thanks}. We are always happy to |
320 | receive e-mails of this type. |
321 | |
322 | Regrettably we don't have time to answer them all in person. If you |
323 | mail us a compliment and don't receive a reply, \e{please} don't |
324 | think we've ignored you. We did receive it and we were happy about |
325 | it; we just didn't have time to tell you so personally. |
326 | |
327 | To everyone who's ever sent us praise and compliments, in the past |
328 | and the future: \e{you're welcome}! |
329 | |
330 | \H{feedback-address} E-mail address |
331 | |
332 | The actual address to mail is |
333 | \cw{<\W{mailto:putty@projects.tartarus.org}{putty@projects.tartarus.org}>}. |