From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Nov 30 0:54:47 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.169.15]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F08537B41B; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:54:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from tedm.placo.com (nat-rtr.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [206.29.168.154]) by mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id fAU8sWR57360; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:54:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" To: , Cc: Subject: RE: Netgraph Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:54:32 -0800 Message-ID: <001201c1797c$a0b7f300$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 In-Reply-To: <10e.8fb0dc1.29383049@aol.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of >A180009977889@aol.com >Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 4:44 PM >To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG >Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: RE: Netgraph > > >"Lego" is a good analogy. The "usefulness" is not the point. Its great for >hackers, and terrible for the general technical population. It depends on >your goal, whether its to build an OS for hackers, or to gain widespread >acceptance for FreeBSD from the general technical public. Complicated, >unintuitive interfaces with a long learning curve are not generally accepted. > >DB > This is a myth, your greately underestimating the "general technical public" The general technical public has displayed a willingness to read instructions and follow directions (much different than the general computing public which is a different animal) If there is anything wrong with netgraph is that there's a lack of examples of setting up common configurations in the handbook, man pages, and other documents. Also, speaking as a writer, section 4 of the manual page on netgraph is extremely hard to digest, within the first paragraph alone they redefine the meaning of the words "graph", "node", "hook", and "edge" I understand it's because of the modularness of the software but this is a man page that needs to be a lot less abbreviated. But none of this matters to the general technical public because what most of those people do is find a FAQ that contains a recipe for what they want to be doing and follow that. 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-hackers" in the body of the message