Re: Debian User's Manual
robert havoc pennington <rhpennin@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
> On 25 Jun 1998, Adam P. Harris wrote:
>> This site has *everything* to do with the documentation project,
>> Robert. It just has not much to do with your particular effort in
>> that respect.
> It's the main developer's page. It has a link to the DDP page. It
> has links to developer docs. But I don't think it's the most
> important issue here.
No, Oliver raised it though. I was responding to that.
> Futzing means a documentation indexing system, a new DTD, umpty
> zillion planned documents, and not much documentation writing. I
> should qualify that: not much documentation writing intended for end
> users, since I started paying attention last summer or so.
Maybe I'm short-sighted or "futzing" by personally prioritizing a
consistent document heirarchy (basically done) and a metadata standard
(close to done), although I personally think it's important.
Not to mention that Igor and I have quietly and without much ado been
editing and working on the Installing Debian 2.0/x86 documentation. I
lost a good deal of sleep earlier this week working on it, making it
more consistent and readable, adding laptop installation instructions.
Anyone hoping to contribute there should contact <igor@igoria.net> or
just send patches off <URL:http://www.igoria.net/install/install.sgml>.
> Anyway, let's not get into a silly argument. Clearly both a doc
> coordinator and doc writing are needed. But please, no one wait for
> those web pages to get updated before writing docs.
No, but people are more likely to contribute if they see a larger
vision. And if they see that their work is getting incorporated into
the document. I hope you've been able to track down the contributions
of others and patch those in, as Oliver and others mentioned.
I guess the lesson, here, Robert, is that you're not going to win
points with or other developers by disparaging their efforts. We're
all volunteers here.
By the bye, you haven't seen me contributing to the tutorial because I
think it's much too ambitious. I would rather see a guideline for
experienced FSF/Linux users getting to know Debian, and how it might
differ from what they expect. I guess I see a general Unix intro,
including permissions, the shell, X11, TeX (!), lpr, etc etc., as just
too large of a project. I'd rather see a guide (or is there one
already?) explaining the Debian way:
* don't install stuff in /usr
* how and when to use dpkg, apt, dselect, dftp
* checking bugs on the BTS
* ...
I wish you the best of luck, however. Please don't get frustrated or
angry that different people have different priorities and goals. You
have to have a thick skin and a bit of pigheadedness to be a debian
developer.
Oh, one last thing. How does the Tutorial relate to the Debian User Manual
(http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/debian-doc/manuals.html#users)?
It seems that there's a *lot* of overlap?
.....A. P. Harris...apharris@onShore.com...<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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