Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:28:54 -0700 From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcw@highperformance.net> To: fbsd_chat <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: on content versus presentation [ was: Re: Why the FreeBSD license will not be changing ] Message-ID: <47DC0756.4050304@highperformance.net> In-Reply-To: <20080315212432.45787@caamora.com.au> References: <478556AD.6090400@bsdforen.de> <20080110154737.GA20976@soaustin.net><47864933.6010203@gmail.com> <20080110170010.GA16567@volatile.engineering.cwru.edu> <20080111115804.T2095@klein.bigpond.com> <47DAF203.40106@emailrob.com> <47DB7009.1020606@highperformance.net> <20080315212432.45787@caamora.com.au>
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jonathan michaels wrote: > On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 11:43:21PM -0700, Jason C. Wells wrote: >> spellberg_robert wrote: >> >>> when your content is sound, >>> the presentation will take care of itself. >> /me hands Rob a paragraph and some upper case letters. >> >> I'm sorry. I found it far too difficult to read your content. The poor >> presentation required more effort than I was willing to invest. > > well, perhaps, now you might know how i feel about trying to may my way throught the way you > all write and present you posts. i struggel to read the majority of > posts .. not everybody read writes presents american english in teh way > "some" americans read write and present thier version of english. You may struggle with the way we all write and present our posts. I'm sure that will improve with time and learning. But if you struggle with the most basic of the rules of grammar and language, the solution is not to ignore the grammar and language. > this world is made up of people whole read, write and > understand/comprehend at various and different levels of competence for > whatever levels of comptance are available in these days of politically > corrected school marking systems. To be sure. But deliberately avoiding the most simple rules does not aid communication. I should target my content to the level of the audience. My presentation should be correct _also_. > we all use the 'lingua franca' at different levels of usability for all > and different levels of competance for all and various differnt levels > of the 'human' condition. my bodies uniqunesses help me see thes > 'different levels' i write the way that i write because this is how > best that i can see (as in visual acuity, as well as frontal cortex > issues both learning) and understanding. Wow! That sure sounds fancy. Can your frontal cortex and visual acuity discern the shift key once in thirty keystrokes? But even your presentation is vastly superior to Rob's in that your paragraphs are at least paragraphs. That alone significantly aids communication. In fact, the reason that my reply to you is lengthy is a testament to the fact that your communication was more effective. Mind you, your presentation is not as I would have it be. But it is good enough that I don't have to struggle to comprehend you. > at any rate this is how i see it and perhaps if we all (me included) > spent more time understanding why people write the way that they might > write rather than HOW they might write .. content is far, far more important > than the presentation of that content. Do you suppose after 5,000 years of humans putting chisel to stone and pen to paper that we don't understand how people should write? We do. That's where grammar and language came from. Presentation elements are a critical part of that. Consider writing right to left. Consider writing bottom to top. These are merely presentational elements. In the context of a specific language it is quite important to write in the prescribed manner. (Hmmm, it just occured to me that an HTML renderer should be able to morph the directionality of language per CSS.) I won't disagree that content is more important. Presentation is about ease of use. Presentation is the ergonomics of the prose. And since good presentation is incredibly much more simple to attain than good content, one ought to put forth the very slight effort needed to achieve good presentation. And what's more. If you are e.e. cummings or Pablo Picasso than feel free to present as you see fit. All others, please color between the lines. > disabled, people, with english as a sencond language and a whole lot of > stuff that is people in between ... sitting at our keyboards we can > foreget that teh stuff out there is another person, a person not a > machine providing content for our own consumption for our benefit. If an author writes to an audience and that author is not writing for the audience's benefit, then what on Earth are they doing? Even now, while I try to persuade the FreeBSD audience, including yourself and Rob, that presentation is also important, I do so because I perceive there is a benefit to the audience. I may be wrong, but that is for the audience to decide. > if this is how we treat people then it dosen't matter how good freebsd, > is. The topic at hand was content versus presentation. The chief point was that presentation is also important to effective communication. My response was terse, but it was not ad hominem. > going to be .. it dosent matter if when they come here to get help Let's get the context correct here. Rob wasn't asking for help. He was pontificating on a topic of presentation, all while using horrendous presentation. I disagreed with his premise. I provided a case in point as rebuttal. Presentation doesn't work itself out. > support and or information we treat tehm like grist for the mill, > anotehr machine for teh provision off our content, our content, my > content, is it worth it .. i ask this question every time i see this > "you didn't provide _my_content_ " in the way that I want it to be > provided, in teh way that it mkes it easy for me to use in teh way that > i want to use it. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to read the FreeBSD handbook if every person who wanted to contribute content did so in a different presentation? I really think that you haven't thought this through very well. And as far as your claim about the selfishness of people wanting "their content" in "their way" I would advise you to consider that the audience and their considerations are vastly more important than the author's. The author should tune his content and his presentation to suit the needs of the audience. > put another way, "dr suess" has a lot to answer for in teh creation of > .. this the "me" generation don't ya think ?? No. Not at all. "I like green eggs and ham. Sam I am." You've twisted a narrow topic of content versus presentation into a broad criticism of all society's selfishness. Don't see the irony in your very own argument? I'm fairly certain that the larger share of the FreeBSD community and especially those engaged in the production of content do see the value of using consistent presentation, format, and tools. Why did I choose to expound to today? Now that I'm done I'm left scratching my head. At least Rob did recognize that "my target audience gets to decide for themselves." One of the things the target audience may decide is, this content is to hard to understand, given it's presentation. We all should be mindful of this. Regards, Jason
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