Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 11:40:47 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah@FreeBSD.org> Cc: cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>, Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>, Alexander Langer <alex@big.endian.de> Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/share/man/man4 rl.4 Message-ID: <XFMail.20021106114047.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <200211061451.gA6EpAlo035097@intruder.bmah.org>
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On 06-Nov-2002 Bruce A. Mah wrote: > If memory serves me right, Alexander Langer wrote: >> Thus spake Mike Silbersack (silby@silby.com): >> >> > In this case, the file in question is a manpage rather than a piece of >> > source code. The source code remains unchanged (as it should be.) >> >> The text in question is not descriminating. It just mentions, that >> the docs and the design are bad. It's up to one himself if he wants >> a cheap NIC and live with malformed data, or if he wants a better >> NIC. However, I think it's quite important to tell people at least what >> a bad chip they are using, and the driver manpage is the correct place >> for this. > > I'm not sure whether all the people objecting to this commit actually > *looked* at the diff, but almost all of the information about the flaws > of the rl(4) NIC actually remained intact. Only two sentences were > deleted: > > The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality: the grammar > and spelling are awful and there is a lot of information missing, > particularly concerning the receiver operation. > One particularly > important fact that the data sheets fail to mention relates to the > way in which the chip fills in the receive buffer. > > The first one deals with the quality of the data sheet...it actually > doesn't say anything about the NIC itself. I think that one *can* go > away. I'd put the second sentence back, however, because it helps the > rest of the paragraph make more sense. The second sentence is important, yes. Of the first sentence, I can see removing the comments about grammar and spelling, but I would leave the information about missing information that that is important. If a company makes sloppy hardware and sloppy documentation that says more than a company that makes sloppy hardware but at least turns out accurate documentation. Maybe: "The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality. There is a lot of information missing, particularly concerning the receiver operation." etc. (and add the second sentence back in). This preserves complaints about the lack of technical quality in the documentation w/o beating up on RealTek for really stupid stuff (spelling, grammar, etc.). This should be restored at the very least if the entire commit is not reverted. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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