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Date:      04 Oct 2002 22:18:09 -0700
From:      swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
To:        "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org>, FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Plea to the doc team
Message-ID:  <751y75a2ge.y75@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <20021005020608.GE83766@wantadilla.lemis.com>
References:  <20021004212757.2a7e3227.trhodes@FreeBSD.org> <20021005020608.GE83766@wantadilla.lemis.com>

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Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> writes:

> I'm not heavily involved in the doc project, but I'm seeing too many
> rule-based modifications.  Yes, overuse of the second person can be
> annoying, but it must bee seen in context.  I'd rather see people
> write documentation which is intelligible and useful rather than
> documentation which merely adheres to certain rules.

Nobody can argue with the last two sentences, but but I'd hate to see
them and that "too many" line discourage Tom from going hammer-and-tongs
at the docs.  I'll bet he fixes a lot more than he harms and the docs
would be better off having him applying a lot of rules with a few
less-than-perfect results than spending his time trying to make
unintelligible sections intelligible -- a time-consuming and error-prone
process.  (He should leave that for AFTER class^h^h^h^h^hrule-applying.)

It's not clear whether Greg said "too many" because he thinks that
too many rule-based modifications made the text worse or because he
thinks people are spending too much time doing that instead of 
improving intelligibility.  I think Tom has his priorities straight
in this matter.  Make a quick-tho-less-than-optimal pass first, and 
then, if there's time, work on some of the hard stuff.

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