[Sussex] Re: Documentation helping

[John D.]

On Sunday 01 April 2007 16:43, Nic James Ferrier wrote:
> "John D." <johnsemail at f2s.com> writes:
> > Of course, I'm well aware that most of what I need to know is either at
> > TLDP or in the man pages, but as I already said, TLDP is bad enough, the
> > man pages are really the pits (IMO of course). I have to read the link I
> > run in my "LQ sig" whenever I need to make use of them!
> > (http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/%7Eguide/help/man.html)
>
> Man pages aren't for you. They're for techies.
>
> But the tldp stuff should be addressing ALL levels of documentation.
>
> It's not just the level of tech detail btw, partly OSS doc is just
> bad. As a techie I ought to be able to understand more of it more
> quickly and I can't. It's just bad a lot of the time.
>
> > Though I can usually work out if I feel that a howto or similar is IMO,
> > well written. I certainly don't have the time to contribute what I'd feel
> > is anything like enough to be of any real use - hence my periodic
> > attendance at LQ and the others (are you listening to this Camelot ???).
> >
> > Ah well, I suppose I'll just have to keep moaning ;P
>
> YES! Keep moaning. Moaning is underrated.
>
> Let's face it - you'd moan at a company and a company is earning money
> from supposedly making things better. And we all know how little
> moaning works with companies.
>
> Well, you have an incentive with moaning at OSS/Free software people
> because they might actually get stuff done if you moan at them!
Manpages ? Check
TLDP ? Check
Moaning ? Check

I've just read the link that Nico posted about Eric Raymonds critique of CUPS. 
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. A more eloquent version of me screaming WTF 
at my monitor (laughable really, because CUPS in one app that I'm usually OK 
at managing to config for my system).

regards

John D.