From owner-freebsd-newbies Wed Aug 2 13:16:57 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from goblin.apana.org.au (goblin.apana.org.au [203.3.126.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 57E1D37BBE2 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2000 13:16:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by goblin.apana.org.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id GAA17514; Thu, 3 Aug 2000 06:16:12 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au) Received: from roadrunner.apana.org.au(203.3.126.132), claiming to be "ROADRUNNER" via SMTP by goblin.apana.org.au, id smtpdP17512; Thu Aug 3 06:16:06 2000 Message-ID: <018d01bffcbf$168aa000$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> From: "Doug Young" To: "Neil Blakey-Milner" , "Rick Hamell" Cc: , "'freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org'" References: <20000802220450.B36147@mithrandr.moria.org> Subject: Re: new books, changing my pt. of view Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 06:20:20 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.5600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.5600 Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I'm certain that there are many other relative newbies like myself who would be prepared to contribute to the documentation project. However during the several months I was subscribed to the docs list the ONLY discussion there was so far over my head that I eventually left the list. I accept the point that developers have other things to do, however it isn't doing FreeBSD much good if the O/S is being avoided by a substantial number of IT consultants because the present state of documentation is such that even relatively experienced unix users find its extremely difficult to get unfamiliar stuff configured. If the O/S is to stay largely in the developer community then I guess this issue isn't a real problem, however I did understand that at least some of the people who write the FreeBSD code would like to see the thing used in the "real world". One way to guarantee that it won't happen quickly is to keep the present "head in the sand" attitude in relation to docs !!!!!!!! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Neil Blakey-Milner" To: "Rick Hamell" Cc: ; "'freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org'" ; "'Doug Young'" Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 6:04 AM Subject: Re: new books, changing my pt. of view > On Wed 2000-08-02 (09:30), Rick Hamell wrote: > > Sun employees a team of technical writers just for that > > purpose. The FreeBSD team can't afford something like that, nor do the > > developers want to do it. It ain't glamours but it's a perfect way for > > those of us who considers ourselves 'newbies' to contribute > > meaningfully. Check out the freebsd-doc@freebsd.org mailing list. > > I think you're making a false assumption when you say "it ain't glamours > (sic)" to be a documentor, and when you say "nor do the developers want > to do it." > > There is massive respect for people who write documentation in the > development and user communities, and the developers often just don't > have the time or ability to produce the end-results, and will often > exchange email furiously with whoever does the documentation to help get > it done. > > Neil > -- > Neil Blakey-Milner > Sunesi Clinical Systems > nbm@mithrandr.moria.org > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message