From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Jan 10 02:33:46 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id CAA19638 for chat-outgoing; Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:33:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from andrsn.stanford.edu (root@andrsn.Stanford.EDU [36.33.0.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA19626 for ; Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:33:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu) Received: from localhost (andrsn@localhost.stanford.edu [127.0.0.1]) by andrsn.stanford.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with SMTP id CAA25364; Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:28:10 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:28:09 -0800 (PST) From: Annelise Anderson Reply-To: Annelise Anderson To: Joerg Wunsch cc: Wolfgang Helbig , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, jmr@ugcs.caltech.edu, kevin_eliuk@sunshine.net, chris@bb.cc.wa.us Subject: Re: learn program In-Reply-To: <19980110100811.19817@uriah.heep.sax.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, J Wunsch wrote: > As Wolfgang Helbig wrote: > > > Joerg, did you plan to put it in FreeBSD's base distribution? > > Yes, that was the intention. > > > Should we? Why not? :-) > > Because the texts are sometimes very far off from today's unix. The > idea was to find a number of volunteers walking through the texts, and > then eventually merge it into the main tree. This idea seems to not > have worked. :( Here's a suggestion: Invite people (users new to unix) on freebsd- questions to beta test the program. One of the features of "learn" is that it intereacts directly with the unix system, so if things have changed, either in the programs or commands being taught or the underlying unix utilities, there could be problems. But it's really pretty boring to go through this lesson by lesson to see if they all work. Also, they seem to branch--if you try to repeat something and speed up the process by not answering the questions and refusing to try again, you get a different sequence of questions. Some things just seem not to work--a question that asks how many files there are in the current directory; something in "macros" that produces an error message that "ex/vi's standard input-output must be a terminal" or something like that. The files in the macros section jump off the screen when printed. Some examples are dated--e.g., "remove the filename that is the name of a baseball player", where the filename is yastrzemski. (Remember yastrzemski?) At one point I managed to get the program hung up enough so I had to su to root and kill the process. These are just a few notes from an hour or so of experimenting-- (I haven't looked at the code at all). A few beta testers who were learning at the same time would produce some helpful results, I think. Someone would have to write up a little note for them-- where to send a report and what to include (lesson number, e.g.). And then of course someone has to be willing to follow up.... Annelise