Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 17:31:44 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Danny Browne <danny_browne@eircom.net> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Poor Applictaion Documentation Message-ID: <20041114173144.GA678@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20041114171440.80F3743D45@mx1.FreeBSD.org> References: <20041114171440.80F3743D45@mx1.FreeBSD.org>
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--PNTmBPCT7hxwcZjr Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 05:14:39PM +0000, Danny Browne wrote: > More of a general gripe thatn a question, >=20 > Why are most of the ports for BSD soooo poorly documented. This is someth= ig i was very suprised at. This isn't the fault of the FreeBSD project: the ports system can only provide basically what the software authors make available. If it was a requirement that software should be documented to around the same standard as FreeBSD itself before it could be made into a port, then there would be only a fraction of the software currently available in the ports. =20 > I am not looking in the right places? >=20 > For example, try and find some page on the web that will tell what the la= test version of gnome fifth toe, (or power tools or whatever) is and what a= ditional packages it will install. Its impossible, because it's not documen= ted.=20 Part of the problem is just that: I suspect that you simply aren't looking in quite the right places -- and it's not like there's any sort of standard for how projects should be documented, or how technical discussions should be operated. Maybe there's a Wiki. Or an ordinary website. Or a mailing list. Or a Usenet group. Or perhaps it's just that there is very little documentation available. It's fairly typical behaviour to write the code, release it generally for testing and so forth, and only worry about documentation at a very late stage. One of the advantages of the FreeBSD ports system is that ports have maintainers, and those maintainers should be keeping up with the mailing lists or whatever, and will update their ports very promptly. That makes the ports system a pretty good central location for keeping up to date with new software versions -- especially if you use http://www.freshports.org/. That site will also tell you just about anything you could need to know about any port, including what all of its dependencies are. =20 > And it's not just gnome alot of the open source UNIX/GNU Linux applicati= ons websites are poorly maintained and info is quite often seriously outdat= ed. >=20 > Feel free to bitch at me if i'm wrong here, but as a relatively new user = this has been my biggest problem. Not the techincal side. Well, that I'm afraid, is just the way of the world. What you're talking about is for the most part written by volunteers, often in their spare time. If you think that documentation is lacking, then you could volunteer to help. Most projects are glad of all of the help they can get. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK --PNTmBPCT7hxwcZjr Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFBl5aAiD657aJF7eIRAm59AKCK2CnuwojkmUm88pAEnqrhcWrsbwCgokpo zQf+76BMWZORZmY9HhudEbE= =KBkb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --PNTmBPCT7hxwcZjr--
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