Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 19:16:47 -0500 From: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> To: Jay Edwards <jayed@jayed.com> Cc: Tom Rhodes <darklogik@pittgoth.com>, bmah@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDCon Doc BoF Notes Message-ID: <20020218191647.A11924@blackhelicopters.org> In-Reply-To: <20020219050357.GN42451@jayed.com>; from jayed@jayed.com on Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 11:03:57PM -0600 References: <200202182315.g1INFpc93221@bmah.dyndns.org> <3C719161.5090803@pittgoth.com> <20020219050357.GN42451@jayed.com>
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Well, when you print it out, the existing Handbook is about 700 pages. This is a bit hefty for a book on "general systems administration." If it wasn't going to grow any more, we wouldn't worry. The Handbook does grow, however. Do we want the 3rd print edition to be 1200 pages? Probably not. Although this is a volunteer project, we do need to consider the needs of our corporate sponsors. FreeBSD Mall put a lot of work into the Handbook's dead tree edition, and dumps that money right back into FreeBSD. IMHO, this makes their desires at least worth considering. The two major proposals were: a) chop the Handbook in half. b) chop the Handbook into several smaller manuals: the Installation Handbook, the Networking Handbook, etc. After some pondering, I like option b. The apparent "difficulty of entry" for new -doc committers would be reduced. Smaller books would be easier to handle and edit. Right now, you can tell that people tried to work on the grammar in the Handbook. Along about Chapter 10 or 11, they gave up. It's just too big for a volunteer effort. While smaller books would contain no less data, they would be easier for volunteers to manage. Of course, other suggestions are welcome. This bikeshed is going to be around a while, I'm afraid. ==ml On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 11:03:57PM -0600, Jay Edwards wrote: > Tom Rhodes(darklogik@pittgoth.com)@2002.02.18 18:42:25 +0000: > > Can I suggest, the division of the hanbook. I can see where the > > handbook can be divided between home user and like corp user. Mainly > > the reasons for this is most home users may not need to know things like > > apache configuration, or sendmail configuration. Just use the ISP's > > mail server for email. > > I'd like to point out that, at this time, 99.999% of all FreeBSD home > users are as technically competent as any FreeBSD corporate user. The > person who uses FreeBSD at home is not likely to have any serious > conceptual problems with apache or sendmail config file. > > I don't see FreeBSD migrating into the population of "I don't understand > apache.conf" anytime soon. (And I think that the number of people who > thoroughly understand sendmail.cf is so small that it's not worth > targeting them). > > Right now, I think that anyone who is going to use FreeBSD at home is > capable of ignoring anything in the Handbook that doesn't apply to them. > If at some point at the future our target audience changes, splitting up > the handbook might make some sense, but I don't think that time is now. > > Jay > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@FreeBSD.org, mwlucas@BlackHelicopters.org my FreeBSD column: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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