Re: tech proposal to make manoj somewhat happy.
On Mon, Jul 27, 1998 at 12:12:35PM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jul 26, 1998 at 07:10:09PM -0700, David Welton wrote:
> > >
> > > However, I needed a book to really get me through a lot of things
> > > (hrmm actually, it was one of those online books that was also printed
> > > - so I was able to read it with Mosaic:-).
> >
> > Everyone needs a driver license to be allowed to drive. Every kitchen tool
> > has a documentation about 20 pages with it.
> >
> > I don't think it is too much requested if one should read a 100 pages book
> > to get started with a computer.
> >
> As the author of such a book, (maybe even the one David read "on-line"?)
> is must provide a bit of caution.
No no .. this was hrmmm Dec '95. I think Matt Welsh had the
Installation and Getting started part of 'Running Linux' online
somehow.
> While I am not insensitive to the needs of the end user, the needs that
> keep me with Debian are functionality based. I don't want to see Debian
> sidetracked from this road by the "needs of the ignorant user". This is
> the venue of the "third party vendor". In the case of my book, that is the
> publisher, and we get paid for reducing the ignorance of potential Debian
> users. These are the areas in which "money" is expected to be made, and as
> such, has little to do with the development project I work on.
One might make a reference to RMS' comments regarding Free
documentation here:-) Infact, I think that books are wonderful (and,
before helping people on the irc or newsgroups, I ask what their book
says about it, and recommend they get one if they don't have one
already), but we are dealing with the core OS, which ought to have
self-contained documentation.
That said, .......
> Anyone who is thinking of complaining about the state of the
> documentation should, instead, look for the group working on them
> and offer some assistance. (Patches work for documentation as well
> as source code)
I totally agree with this as well. Personally, I am not terribly
interested in documentation issues, so I really don't feel the right
to tell other people what to do.
Ciao,
--
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org
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