From owner-freebsd-doc Fri May 15 10:18:40 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA02261 for freebsd-doc-outgoing; Fri, 15 May 1998 10:18:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dt050n33.san.rr.com (@dt053nd2.san.rr.com [204.210.34.210]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA02256 for ; Fri, 15 May 1998 10:18:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Studded@dal.net) Received: from dal.net (Studded@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dt050n33.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA09263; Fri, 15 May 1998 10:18:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Studded@dal.net) Message-ID: <355C78E7.C9BDCE13@dal.net> Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 10:18:31 -0700 From: Studded Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE-0507 i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ac199@hwcn.org CC: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: file://localhost/usr/share/doc/handbook/handbook.html References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Tim Vanderhoek wrote: > > On Wed, 13 May 1998, Studded wrote: > > > "good" in this context. The problem in this context (as we've discussed > > before) is that there are different ways to learn and grasp concepts. > > The problem with a lot of unix documentation (and especially man pages) > > is that it's written by people who are extremely left-brain oriented and > > therefore have a difficult time presenting information in a way that > > helps non-techie's grasp the concepts. > > How does this manifest itself such that manpages are easy to > learn from for left-brain-orientated people and difficult for > others? People who are left brain dominant tend to write things in a left brain dominant way. :) I could go into more details about learning styles and such if you like, but my basic point is that people tend to write documentation about a project the same way they think about the project. Combine that with the fact that most programmers are terrible at writing prose and we can end up in a dire situation. :) Doug -- *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** *** Proud designer and maintainer of the world's largest Internet *** Relay Chat server with 5,328 simultaneous connections. *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message