From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Jun 25 12:08:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA09085 for chat-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:08:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from federation.addy.com (federation.addy.com [207.239.68.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA09049; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:08:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from slip129-37-112-181.pa.us.ibm.net (slip129-37-112-181.pa.us.ibm.net [129.37.112.181]) by federation.addy.com (8.8.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA07603; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:08:28 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199706251908.PAA07603@federation.addy.com> From: "Francisco Reyes" To: "FreeBSD Chat List" Cc: "doc@FreeBSD.ORG" Date: Wed, 25 Jun 97 15:11:28 Reply-To: "Francisco Reyes" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Francisco Reyes's Registered PMMail 1.9 For OS/2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: FreeBSD documentation (was: OS/2 users going to FreeBSD?) Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:28:51 -0500 (EST), John Fieber wrote: >On Wed, 25 Jun 1997, Francisco Reyes wrote: >I'll see what I can do to documenting and streamline the >submission policy. I think a template SGML document and a documented sample would go a long way. Last time I tried I remember I downloaded some of the existing SGML and could not make much sense of them. >The best info at the moment is http://www.freebsd.org/docproj.html, but it isn't very prominent >and could use a lot more "how to" information. The page is actually not bad at all, but I am wondering if there shouldn't be more prominence on the pages that direct users on how to help the project. I am sure that somewhere in the FAQ and Handbook it points out to that docproj page, but why not have right there in the main "www.freebsd.org". How about a page with links on how to help: the "How to Help the FreeBSD project page". This page could simply be links to sections of the FAQ and Handbook. >It may be better to de-emphasize issues of document format. If >the *content* is good, I really don't care what the format >is--SGML tagging is fairly mindless work. True, but it still takes time (your time or someone's elses time). I still think that a documented SGML template can go a long way. >Unfortunatly, good programming skill and good technical writing skill seem to be >mutually exclusive in practice. I am sure there are many people like myself, who are neither great at either, but are willing to improve at both. It is taking me a long time to get truly familiar with FreeBSD, but little by little I find myself doing a little more every day on it. I am even thinking of trying to use it for all my Internet needs (currently using OS/2 for that). >The FreeBSD crowd tends to have a lot more programmers than writers. This is going back to the "Desktop vs Server" issue. If FreeBSD is mostly used as a server then the people who use it will be mostly technical. If we can get it to be a bit easier to use then we may get many more people to use it as a desktop and THOSE are the people who may help us with the writing.