While i relaise asking you to read a whole document is, well, demanding, i find it hard to believe that people seriosuly cannot "hold focus" long enough to do it - its not like we dont allow to take a 10 minute break or anything. Id be supprised if it took anyone as long as an exam (a real exam lasts for 3 hrs, at least in the uk) and everyone is expected to "hold focus" for at least that long or just fail - personaly i find it a little lazy that people seem to expect things to just work without having to read/learn/do anything at all. until someone invents a computer that can read your mind to know what it is you want, you will still need some way of telling them which will no doubt involve actaully doing something on your part.
Anyway, in answer do your points:
1. Supprisingly you need to read it all, they are all valid options, and all should be considered important... so which go at the top.
2. the example config dosnt work because each network requires _diffrent_ information, there is no generic config we can include that will just work everywhere. However, if you think its possible by all means create one and send it back to us, we'd love a generic will always work no matter what, needs no human interferance config file.
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Reagrding the OR option... The main reason for this is anope was never built to be run as an icon (im not making excuses, i realise there is a problem here, we'll get to it in a sec) as such, it expects the user to be able to read the errors it prints out telling them what is wrong with the config. Temporary solutions can be to simply open a cmd.exe box, and start anope from there, which will allow you to read the messages it prints out. Look in the log file (assuming it gets that far before an errror) and you can see errors in there.
A possible solution to this would be, for win32 systems, if we are exiting due to an error at startup, insisnt on a key press, that would stop windows from hiding the cmd box as soon as it possibly can and give people a chance to read the error messages.
A config check utility sounds intresting, if you want to make one and send it back to us im sure we will consider it for anope.
I dont mean this to sound mean here, or like im just dismissing your ideas/suggestions/comments, but im curious if your willing to help address any of the problems you raised. For example, if the config is too confusing, would you be willing to submit documentation about we could include in anope? Would you be prepared to offer a simple "10 step guide" we could include in anope, which covers the real basics which you seem to think we missed out. How about a few FAQ questions that could document the common pitfalls, all the ones you encounted and how you fixed them etc.... There are a number of ways both technical and non-technical people can help when something bothers them, most people however dont do any of this but expect someone else to.
p.s. I take it you got it to work in the end?