From owner-freebsd-doc Mon Aug 5 7:55:52 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33EAF37B401; Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DC1A43E70; Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ripper@eskimo.com) Received: from eskimo.com (ripper@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA07667; Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:38 -0700 Received: (from ripper@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id HAA18220; Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:38 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200208051455.HAA18220@eskimo.com> From: Ross Lippert To: anderson@centtech.com Cc: blackend@freebsd.org, cjuniet@entreview.com, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org In-reply-to: <3D4E88A3.8060401@centtech.com> (message from Eric Anderson on Mon, 05 Aug 2002 09:16:03 -0500) Subject: Re: docs/41106: FreeBSD Handbook lacks "Desktop Applications" chapter. 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 There is the issue of bias when if comes to apps, certainly. One of the reasons there are so many configurations to chose from is because there are so many biases out ther, one per person ('cept for clones, I guess). FreeBSD let's you have your bias, and that's about freedom. But the price of freedom is sometimes not knowing what to do with all of it, and wanting to look to what other people do -- role models, in a sense. How often it is that we learn cool unix tricks by sitting next to someone as they do something we never thought of or didn't know. I'm not sure I'd be psyched about ratings. Too often something gets a bad rating because the reviewer didn't know how to use it (e.g. mplayer often gets bad reviews because people try to use the gui, which sucks compared to xine and the rest). I think anyone writing a port-testimonial should LOVE the port they are testifying to, or at least find it to be the best thing for them. I would not trust configure and howto information from anyone who was not totally enamored with their subject, but was just covering it as some sort of round-up of similar apps. Conversely, we should avoid flame-wars, I think reviews can sometimes be offensive if too negative, esp if that negativity is misguided (and it is rare that someone knows enough about something to be able to intelligently convince you to not like it). It creates bad blood. But some amount of review is just de-facto by presense or absense. For example, if I don't see any emacs testimonials I can, 1) newbie: assume there is no love, and maybe I don't want to try it 2) user/lover: correct the lack of love by writing my own testimonial and standing up for my favorite editor. I'm more a fan of diaries, where someone says "I did something neat, here is what it looks like, here's howto", and perhaps someone writes back and says "here's a neater way to do it". I'm not envisioning a diary here, but I am thinking about something which is unashamedly personally biased. It is important to maintain some standards, maybe docproj styles articles. You must not just love the app but love writing good documentation and have a willingness to maintain what you write and maybe combine it with other stuff. There was some discussion about a "multimedia" chapter which I started writing a few months ago (recall my mplayer example). Feedback I got from it indicated that if one starts off with a "multimedia" type chapter, then one is basically talking about ports and how to use them, and where and how that belongs in the handbook is controversial. Probably right. But I still can't help the urge to want to trumpet this and other video apps I came to enjoy. Since we are proposing an experiment, and since the contents will be biased (in either review or testimonial form), perhaps we should start by putting up little articles on our own homepages, and convincing others on doc to do so, make september the "write about your fav app month". We can submit URLs to be linked to from FreeBSD.org, and if it takes off and we end up with an explosion of articles (say by January or else assume we failed), we move to phase II, which necessarily involves more indexing and organization, perhaps more automated feedback to authors. If momentum keeps up, I don't see why it could not be made part of freebsd.org or the /usr/doc as long as a big fat disclaimer for bias is present. Not to mention that if this experiment ever becomes "official" we can ask people involved in projects or port-maintainers if they wouldn't mind jotting down some power-user notes on their apps. How does that sound to you? Oh another source for "good ports" info: I think bsdtoday.org has some howto's on it for things like VMWare and stuff, but I'm sure it is just an archive with no one maintaining it -- yet it remains my first resource for setting up VMWare, I know no other. There should be another. -r >Ross, I think this is a great idea. I thought of something similar to this not >too long ago, and was going to set up a web site with some of this on it >(although you painted a much clearer picture than what I had imagined). I'd >also be interested in rating ports, based on ease of use, installation, >difficulty level, etc. Now, should this be a freebsd.org thing, or a "third >party" site? I think it might be important to have freebsd.org officially >unbiased, so maybe a third party site that freebsd.org points to would be a >better idea? > >Eric To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message