Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:38:16 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@bryden.apana.org.au> To: "Duke Normandin" <01031149@3web.net>, "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <mij@osdn.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: documentation issues generally Message-ID: <046701c0ab3c$c4a66300$847e03cb@apana.org.au>
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Seems like the docs situation is destined to keep going the same route as present. Its quite obvious that the "official" docs people are more interested in the systems used to create docs than the content thereof. The result is that more & more users (recalling their own difficulty with the official formats) will establish sites like freebsddiary / bsdvault / mostgraveconcern / freebsdzine / etc etc to cater for those who (quite rightly) believe that the official stuff is aimed at the geekship. I personally don't believe there is any point in submitting material to freebsd-docs ... I favour an infinitely more user-friendly format (eg including a bunch of screen dumps, step_by_step examples & "real world" examples of typical commands) rather than the mind numbing synopsis style complexity of the man pages. Maybe the man pages aren't the "correct" place for explicit explanations, but if thats the case then the Handbook certainly is. To be fair its definitely an improvement on what it was a year ago & light years ahead of most of the linux equivalents, however the screen dumps /examples / etc are still conspicuous by their absence. OK so some of the user-friendly sites have errors .... at least they make an honest attempt to provide information in an intelligible form which is something still lacking in the official documentation. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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