Re: documentation eq software ?
On Sunday, Aug 31, 2003, at 10:31 US/Eastern, Mathieu Roy wrote:
Misrepresentation is always bad.
Adding invariant section in a software would be harmful (do I need to
explain why?) and so we cannot, even if there is a risk of
misrepresentation, allow it.
Demanding that a command-line program always provide a --politics
option is no more harmful, possibly even less so, than adding a section
to documentation.
Adding invariant section in a documentation, for secondaries parts (as
defined in the FDL) is not so harmful: a reader of a documentation can
skip a chapter if he's not interested in,
I generally prefer to read documentation on paper over on screen: It's
fair easier on the eyes, is more portable, less worry about it getting
damanged/lost, etc.
So, I have to either pay the additional costs of printing the invariant
sections. or the additional costs of my time to carefully exclude those
sections from printing.
Or if I buy a copy in book form, I have to pay extra for the publisher
having to print it.
Or when I download a copy, it takes more bandwidth.
Or when I store a copy, it takes more disk space. Or shelve space.
Or when I cary a copy, it weighs more.
That's "not harmful", I guess. I've mentioned many of these before on
this list. No one has bothered to refute them.
for instance, nobody is forced to read the GNU Manifesto when using
Emacs documentation (while it would not be the case if the Manifesto
was included in the "File menu").
Straw man! The obvious equivalent would be if M-x manifesto brought up
the manifesto (no idea if it does), and that any modified version of
emacs had to do the same.
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