Re: A clueless newbie writes in
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On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, Eldad wrote:
> Ok, so I've installed Debian. I now have a huge amount of feedback on it;
> since I can't really do much coding in my spare time, this seems the best
> way I can help the Cause.
Great! We do need more than coders.
> Where does this feedback go? a lot if it relates to certain packages; I
> could go on about dselect for hours. But where? mailing lists? usenet?
> is there a 'canonical' way to find the authors of a certain package?
You could always email the author, or for Debian packages you can file a
bug report (with priority 'wishlist' if it's not really a bug).
As for dselect, check the archives. We seem to have one of these
discussions "how horrible dselect is for newbies" every month or two ;)
> On a related note, documentation for software is a major frustration;
> different packages have their help info as:
>
> * man pages
> * info
> * groff?
i may be wrong, but i think this is more or less the same as manpages.
> * text or html documents in /usr/doc
> * text or html documents wherever the application installs
Debian tries to stay away from this one, at least for general docs.
> * perldoc
Usually translated to manpages, but not always...
> * internal documentation (available through menus or commands)
> * more ???
HTML on the web. Postscript docs. Comments in configuration files. The
Source.
At least no one's tried a dancing paperclip!
> Does it take a clueless newbie to point out how hopelessly confusing this
> is to a clueless newbie?
Part of it is that many coders would rather code than write documentation.
Another part is that the GNU folks are trying to replace man with info,
for some obscure reason that i don't care about. Text docs are useful for
more in-depth than manpages. Postscript is great for distributing
really long docs and for printables.
> Remember, folks. The next battle is going to be for the desktop.
>
> (I know, I got it for free, I should shut up, roll up my sleeves and
> start coding... if people can't figure out how something works, they
> should be running redhat or another lesser distro anyway. Only girlies
> who would need the docs in the first place would have trouble anyway,
> and they should just try everything or give up and install an
> operating system designed for obvious morons like themselves.)
As i mentioned above, there's plenty you can do without knowing how to
code well (people who think every Linux user should be a hacker annoy
me...). For example, the Debian undocumented(7) manpage has this quote:
If you are a competent and accurate writer and are willing to spend
the time reading the source code and writing good manpages please
write a better man page than this one. Please contact the package
maintainer in order to avoid several people working on the same
manpage.
So if writing is your talent, go for it. If your talent is artistic in
nature, you might be able to help a coder with making his GUI look pretty.
- --
finger for PGP public key.
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