Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:55:52 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@bryden.apana.org.au> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: documentation issues generally Message-ID: <02f601c0ab8a$adace680$0200a8c0@apana.org.au> References: <000601c0ab84$db0a6c20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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My point is that the "user-friendly" sites wouldn't be there at all if the official documentation fitted the needs of all users, rather than simply the experts. The same situation applies largely to "The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide" & "The Complete FreeBSD" even though they appear to be targeted at least slightly higher up the experience scale. Certainly newbies have a requirement for more explicit explanations. Its obvious that most experts are against making man pages more of a tutorial, so whats the solution ?? The system of merely telling newbies to RTFM just doesn't work unless the newbie can comprehend some of whatever manual. I've done as several experts have suggested at times & spent $100 or so at a time on O'Reilly books (thats what they can cost in OZ), 90% of which goes way over my head. I guess one can always read whatever can be comprehended, try a few things, badger the list etc, but thats frustrating for everyone. In many cases the explanation in the handbook could be improved dramatically by the simple addition of a screenshot and/or example of usage ... in other places adding an extra line or two would do the trick, however there appears to be some sort of taboo against explicit docs. If as it appears to many of us the docs people guard their territory jealously like priests / lawyers / medicos / etc, is there any reason why a group of interested regulars couldn't create a " Pedantic Supplement" or the like .... maybe just the standard handbook with all the missing bits added (screenshots / step_by_step_explanations / examples / etc) ??. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Doug Young" <dougy@bryden.apana.org.au>; "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 4:14 PM Subject: RE: documentation issues generally > >-----Original Message----- > >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Doug Young > >Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 6:08 AM > > > >How then do you explain the growing number of sites like freebsddiary ?? > > > > Now, listen, this is getting a bit silly. > > There's no logical follow that just because there's more FreeBSD websites > that it means the system documentation is poor. There are just as many > other valid reasons that this can be happening, here's a few: > > 1) It's getting easier and easier every year to CREATE websites, and > cheaper and cheaper to field them. > > 2) There's more FreeBSD in use out there than there used to be - I'm sure > that FreeBSD use has doubled several times over the past 3 years and if you > look at the number of websites as a percentage of the general FreeBSD usage, > I don't think you could make your case - in fact I'd suspect that there's a > smaller percentage of FreeBSD users setting up websites on FreeBSD than ever > before. > > 3) The number of UNIX applications ported to FreeBSD has exploded, there's a > lot more things that you can do with it than there used to be. > > 4) There's more newbies using FreeBSD than ever before and newbies naturally > consume more documentation than experienced folks. > > > Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com > Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide > Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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