From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Apr 10 1:12:53 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.86.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 851E437B416; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:12:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g3A8C3eZ038319; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 10:12:03 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Cc: hiten@uk.FreeBSD.org, Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai , "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" , John Baldwin , cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Feature removal without replacement (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha machdep.c src/sys/conf NOTES) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 10 Apr 2002 00:34:57 PDT." <20020410073457.GF22522@freebsdmall.com> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 10:12:03 +0200 Message-ID: <38318.1018426323@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In message <20020410073457.GF22522@freebsdmall.com>, Murray Stokely writes: >Point those people to the Handbook, tell them to search for 'devfs', >etc.. If they can't find the material they are looking for, then ask >them to submit minor patches to clarify 5.0 functionality, rather than >write a whole new book. When as a kid I first learned about "ghost-writers" I became very very upset. I felt cheated because what I thought were some famous person having written his own memoirs were in fact what some random bloke had written after talking to that person and not 1st hand evidence so to speak. Now, having come to an age where I have learned, often the hard way, that "having an idea", "implementing an idea" and "communicating an idea" are three entirely different things which require three entirely different skill-sets, I feel a lot more relaxed about the concept of "ghost-writers" because I realize that what they do is really translation. Anyone who has listened to a tape-recording of Niels Bohr will know how apt that metaphor _really_ is. I will readily admit that it is certainly not the fault of the doc team that so little documentation has come out of my own effort: whenever I have produced something they have jumped on it like hawks on a slice of roastbeef. Right now for instance, I have a patch to geom(4) sitting in my inbox which as far as I can see changes every second source line or so. And that is not an encouraging batting average for someone like me to sit down and stare at an empty editor... I guess the bit that I feel missing is: to me as a developer "the doc team" is a bit too nebulous an entity to get into a stable and productive relationship with, it becomes an case by case thing which never really finds its own rythm and regularity. My suggestion to the doc-team would be: identify the developers who you want to get documentation from and try to find a ghostwriter who would be a good match for that developer. I think it would work better for at least some of the developers like me. And I am more than willing to take my own medicine. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message