...

This kind of treatment only serves to deter people from asking questions.

?? I ?? should not have provided the answer ????

Sure, if you wanted to, but there are ways to make your points more diplomatically. I'm new to this list, but I've been posting on mailing lists for many years and even wrote a brief guide of proper list etiquette: http://www.ubaight.com/JeffsRules.html I have to say that I'm amazed by the level knowledge that you and others routinely share with us. But I have to also say that this is by far the most intolerant list I've ever monitored. There is a definite old school linux/unix "you haven't earned the right to post here" attitude exhibited by some on this list. SuSE is not a niche product for hackers and academics anymore. It's a major distro with enterprise and home desktop aspirations. Those users cannot be expected to have the same knowledge or posting skills as the traditional linux user and will simply say "screw it" and walk away. I don't think that benefits either them or us. Just my $.02. Jeff

Jeffrey, On Thursday 07 October 2004 18:14, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

...

I have to say that I'm amazed by the level knowledge that you and others routinely share with us. But I have to also say that this is by far the most intolerant list I've ever monitored. There is a definite old school linux/unix "you haven't earned the right to post here" attitude exhibited by some on this list.

I used to see this sort of criticism all the time on on the Cygwin list. Both that list and this one have some things in common. They are both high-volume lists, both cover a very broad range of issues with lots of subtleties and complexities and both have a wide range of knowledge and expertise among the participants. And both communities are forced by those circumstances to try to hold users in check from silly and ignorant practices in order to keep the list from devolving into such marginal usefulness that those with knowledge to share can't stand wading through the cruft and fluff to avail others of their insights and expertise.

SuSE is not a niche product for hackers and academics anymore. It's a major distro with enterprise and home desktop aspirations. Those users cannot be expected to have the same knowledge or posting skills as the traditional linux user and will simply say "screw it" and walk away. I don't think that benefits either them or us. Just my $.02.

We don't expect people to have topic knowledge, or they'd be answering instead of asking. On the other hand it is entirely reasonable to expect (and, if necessary, demand) that people respect the rules of etiquette that are stipulated for this forum. And "posting skills" really shouldn't be an issue. Shouldn't be, but are...

Jeff

Randall Schulz

On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 18:35:37 -0700 Randall R Schulz wrote:

I used to see this sort of criticism all the time on on the Cygwin list. Both that list and this one have some things in common. They are both high-volume lists, both cover a very broad range of issues with lots of subtleties and complexities and both have a wide range of knowledge and expertise among the participants. And both communities are forced by those circumstances to try to hold users in check from silly and ignorant practices in order to keep the list from devolving into such marginal usefulness that those with knowledge to share can't stand wading through the cruft and fluff to avail others of their insights and expertise.

Agreed!

...

SuSE is not a niche product for hackers and academics anymore. It's a major distro with enterprise and home desktop aspirations. Those users cannot be expected to have the same knowledge or posting skills as the traditional linux user and will simply say "screw it" and walk away. I don't think that benefits either them or us. Just my $.02.

If the list continues to move in the direction it's taken recently it will be the "hackers and academics" and the "traditional Linux user" (as you term us) who will walk- and then what will happen?

We don't expect people to have topic knowledge, or they'd be answering instead of asking. On the other hand it is entirely reasonable to expect (and, if necessary, demand) that people respect the rules of etiquette that are stipulated for this forum.

And "posting skills" really shouldn't be an issue. Shouldn't be, but are...

Agreed again! Terence

Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

...

...

...

SuSE is not a niche product for hackers and academics anymore. It's a major distro with enterprise and home desktop aspirations. Those users cannot be expected to have the same knowledge or posting skills as the traditional linux user and will simply say "screw it" and walk away. I don't think that benefits either them or us. Just my $.02.

If the list continues to move in the direction it's taken recently it will be the "hackers and academics" and the "traditional Linux user" (as you term us) who will walk- and then what will happen?

That would be disastrous as well, but i don't think that hostile and demeaning answers are the solution. Do you? That's my point here. You can, and should, educate and direct inexperienced posters to the resources they need, but do it with respect. Take a look at some of the recent posts by Carlos Robinson and Anders Johansson. These are very bright guys who answer lots of questions and are helpful without being harsh or rude. They are an example of what I see on other lists and what I try to emulate.

Have a good one...

Jeff

You guys may be referring to other posts as well, but mine is included here, I believe. Schneider was not wrong to point out my error - I'm not an inexperienced poster. I have, though, pointed out a solution to a pervasive problem. Seems to me like that should be given thoughtful consideration. Maybe it has in the past, prior to my joining the list, but I'm not privy to that. At any rate, while I can understand the annoyance - I occasionally get list mail in my in-box - as opposed to my list box. Nevertheless, it does seem we could all exercise some patience with each other. I saw an interesting post on the Debian Users list - a note to the list-etiquette-howto by Bruce Perens, et al. I did go and read it. Perhaps SUSE should include a link to it from their list-subscription page. :) If nothing else, it certainly represents the sentiments of some on these lists. Don -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

On Friday 08 October 2004 11:35 am, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

I originally wrote "Jeff's Rules" to provide guidance for some smaller lists that didn't have any rules posted. These days most sites either post their own etiquette guidelines or post links like you suggest. Some send them to you in the confirmation e-mail. I think these are all helpful ways of reducing the friction that's inevitable on a list like this.

I wonder how much difference a posted set of rules really makes. People who are determined to show how smart they are by putting down others or responding "RTFM" to almost any query will do it no matter what the official rules. And opinions on some issues, such as the best way to quote previous posts, are divided. Some people become outraged by top-quoting or even by quoting at all. Personally, my policy on that is to quote what's necessary to clarify the context, and no more, and to put the quote ahead of my response so that the whole thing can be read serially. And I always eliminate signatures, list notices, and salutations from quotes since they provide no useful information in that context. Paul

The 2004-10-08 at 12:12 -0400, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

Same here. I think there are varying opinions about snippage. Since I'm on many lists I like to see more previous conversation than some others do. This helps me keep track of which thread I'm on. I also think this helps if someone wants to join an ongoing thread or if a thread has branched, but IMHO this is the discretion of the poster.

If the posters use thread aware MUAs, I don't need more than a little context. If I want to check what the previous poster wrote, I only have to move my cursor up on the header list to get it. The problem is, however, that some posters use broken software. Those on yahoo webmail, for example, are a pain. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

* Paul W. Abrahams [10-09-04 10:52]:

But Carlos, how about the case where I'm answering a post that raises issues A, B, and C, each of which merits a particular response? The logical order of my answer is A, response to A, B, response to B, C, response to C. Even using an MUA such as the one you recommend, I lose the association between each issue and the response to it if I don't quote A, B, and C in the proper places.

But postings are supposedly to address singular issues each to allow interested parties to follow their *own* interests w/o being required to sift thru the flufffff. If this format is followed, your synopsis should not occur. The general rules for posting in news/mail groups appearing in *many* places, one mentined on this list in the last few days, support the *singular* issue mentioned above. I can provided many url's if requested. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/photos

The Saturday 2004-10-09 at 11:47 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:

On Friday 08 October 2004 5:53 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

If the posters use thread aware MUAs, I don't need more than a little context. If I want to check what the previous poster wrote, I only have to move my cursor up on the header list to get it.

But Carlos, how about the case where I'm answering a post that raises issues A, B, and C, each of which merits a particular response? The logical order of my answer is A, response to A, B, response to B, C, response to C. Even using an MUA such as the one you recommend, I lose the association between each issue and the response to it if I don't quote A, B, and C in the proper places.

By all means! Just quote a paragraph about A, answer it, then another bit about B, answer, etc. No problem :-) I do that all the time. I only object when some people answer leaving the complete original text intact, and not always: like when I can find below two or three posts, or when someone sends a big log and then some one answers with a line (top or bottom, doesn't matter) living the full 16 kilobytes of quoting intact. That is, I grumble when the non original content is fairly big. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

I'm going to blush... :-)

I've gone and given Carlos a swelled head... Now he'll be strutting around here for weeks with his chest stuck out looking for a medal. ;-)

Yo! On Friday 08 October 2004 14:49, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The 2004-10-08 at 12:17 -0400, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

...

...

I'm going to blush... :-)

I've gone and given Carlos a swelled head... Now he'll be strutting around here for weeks with his chest stuck out looking for a medal. ;-)

X'-)

I'm having a muscular ache of so much laughing. I think I'll request sick leave :-p

Tell the truth. You messed up your back with all that prideful strutting, didn't you?

-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

RRS

Chuck, On Saturday 09 October 2004 12:26, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Friday 2004-10-08 at 16:13 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

...

...

I'm having a muscular ache of so much laughing. I think I'll request sick leave :-p

Tell the truth. You messed up your back with all that prideful strutting, didn't you?

X'-)

Now, I'll have to go and see my psychiatrist. Where is Eliza? :-P

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Chatbot-Eliza/> Be sure to read "Computer Power and Human Reason" by the same author as the original Eliza software (Joseph Weizenbaum). I just picked up a used paperback edition for $3.00 at my local used bookstore. God, how I love that place.

Arhg! There is no eliza in 9.1! Nowo what shall I do! I'm going to faint.

How do you feel about going to faint?

:-p

-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

RRS

Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Friday 2004-10-08 at 09:41 -0400, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

...

That would be disastrous as well, but i don't think that hostile and demeaning answers are the solution. Do you? That's my point here. You can, and should, educate and direct inexperienced posters to the resources they need, but do it with respect. Take a look at some of the recent posts by Carlos Robinson and Anders Johansson. These are very bright guys who answer lots of questions and are helpful without being harsh or rude. They are an example of what I see on other lists and what I try to emulate.

I'm going to blush... :-)

I'm going to puke... ;-)

On Thursday 07 October 2004 21:56, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Friday, 8 October 2004 03.14, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:

...

I have to say that I'm amazed by the level knowledge that you and others routinely share with us. But I have to also say that this is by far the most intolerant list I've ever monitored.

Note that this is a very new phenomenon. There has been an influx of users here, I guess from other distros, and they bring with them behaviour which is not native to this list. It didn't use to be like this

No problem. It's not a big deal is easily fixable by good example and gentle chiding. I for one really enjoy this list and have already learned a ton in the short time I've been subscribed. Jeff

Danny, On Friday 08 October 2004 09:17, Danny Sauer wrote:

...

--Danny, who wishes there was a unisex replacement for he/she that wasn't as cumbersome as "one"...

"They / them / their" works fine. Nelson Bowles ("What Color Is Your Parachute?" -- *) points out that at one time number agreement was considered less important than gender agreement and this practice was accepted part of English grammar. It's what I usually do. Also I find "staff- hours / weeks / months" to be preferable to "man- hours / weeks / months." The only thing I'm at a loss for is a counterpart to "unmanned." "Unstaffed" doesn't quite work for me. (*) "The 1990 What Color Is Your Parachute?" Nelson Bowles (c) 1990 ... Page xxi Randall Schulz

Danny Sauer wrote:

I guess the solution is to just use a different language that *has* a singular, unisex pronoun. This'll be my last post in English. :)

--Danny, who, unfortunately, doesn't know enough of any other language

How 'bout C? Bi-lingual programmer. Speaks C and Python. ;-)

Danny Sauer wrote:

James wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] Juvenile antics on the list' on Fri, Oct 08 at 15:39:

...

Danny Sauer wrote:

...

I guess the solution is to just use a different language that *has* a singular, unisex pronoun. This'll be my last post in English. :)

--Danny, who, unfortunately, doesn't know enough of any other language

How 'bout C?

Bi-lingual programmer. Speaks C and Python. ;-)

I'd post in perl, but then the unenlightened would complain that perl is unreadabale.

I hear it's almost as bad as APL. ;-)

On Friday, 8 October 2004 18.17, Danny Sauer wrote:

Powell, wrote regarding '[SLE] Juvenile antics on the list' on Thu, Oct 07 at 17:35:

...

I have included Patrick's reply below merely as an example. Telling people to RTFM or search on Google is not terribly helpful. For either of these methods to be useful, you have to know what it is you're looking for in the first place. This kind of treatment only serves to deter people from asking questions.

[...]

...

I'm all for the "Teach a man to fish" philosophy, but sometimes, you just need a quick fix for something so you can move on and get past it. Don't forget, today's 'noob' is tomorrow's guru.

That "guru of tomorrow" will never attain guru status if he never learns to 1) brush off responses that appear hasty and 2) search for himself before asking for the quick fix. When people ask questions to which the answers could be found in the first couple entries google returns, or by simply reading the man page, then it seems totally appropriate to direct them to google or the man page.

One of my teachers once asked us what we thought the most important thing we had learned (or would learn) at university was. The answer (very correct) wasn't some obscure piece of information, or even some very useful piece of information, it was *how to search* for information. If you don't know how to look for information, google can be your worst nightmare If you can't tell a good answer from a bad one (and there are some very bad ones out there), google can be your worst enemy

--Danny, who wishes there was a unisex replacement for he/she that wasn't as cumbersome as "one"...

it? What's wrong with "one"? It's not as bad as Swedish, our equivalent to "one" actually is "man", so we get crap even if we use the supposedly gender neutral alternative :)

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:55:29 +0200 Anders Johansson wrote:

One of my teachers once asked us what we thought the most important thing we had learned (or would learn) at university was. The answer (very correct) wasn't some obscure piece of information, or even some very useful piece of information, it was *how to search* for information.

If you don't know how to look for information, google can be your worst nightmare

If you can't tell a good answer from a bad one (and there are some very bad ones out there), google can be your worst enemy

Careful here, Anders, you may upset the new PC on this list.... The points you are making are solid, but should not be restricted- there are info, man and countless other sources of information available to those who are able (read "willing") to check them out before loading the list with their "instant gratification" questions. Those who don't want to aren't and will. Being right is no defence in these cases. Bummer. Terence

On Sunday 10 October 2004 10:02 am, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Friday, 8 October 2004 22.32, Terence McCarthy wrote:

...

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:55:29 +0200

Anders Johansson wrote:

...

One of my teachers once asked us what we thought the most important thing we had learned (or would learn) at university was. The answer (very correct) wasn't some obscure piece of information, or even some very useful piece of information, it was *how to search* for information.

If you don't know how to look for information, google can be your worst nightmare

If you can't tell a good answer from a bad one (and there are some very bad ones out there), google can be your worst enemy

Careful here, Anders, you may upset the new PC on this list....

The points you are making are solid, but should not be restricted- there are info, man and countless other sources of information available to those who are able (read "willing") to check them out before loading the list with their "instant gratification" questions. Those who don't want to aren't and will.

You seem to have missed my point. If you don't have a certain amount of base knowledge, you will have a very hard time reading and understanding the often terse and poorly written man/info pages, and googling around when you can't tell the difference between a correct answer and an incompetent, dangerous answer is very difficult as well

Being a newbie is hard

And very time consuming. I like linux in spite of the fact that it doesn't always 'just work'. When you have to spend hours or days trying to find answers to problems instead of just getting the job done your working on it can be very frustrating. I don't think people don't search for answers because their lazy , I think they just want to get whatever they're doing done in a reasonable amount of time. Collectively this list knows a lot, it's a 'living' database and in many ways it's better than google because searching for answers on the list doesn't leave you drowning in a sea of information looking for the 'answer'. Personally I have a lot of respect for this list. It replaced my local lug as my source of information long ago and I have learned a LOT on this list, including how to use google effectively:-). Maybe a FAQ list would be good for the list, to hold all the answers people get tired of giving over and over again. We could all contribute the questions and answers from the list that have really helped us to use linux more effectively. It may be tedious for you who know the answers but for us who don't you provide an invaluable and timely service. Thank you, Jerome

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 22:02:43 +0200 Anders Johansson wrote:

You seem to have missed my point. If you don't have a certain amount of base knowledge, you will have a very hard time reading and understanding the often terse and poorly written man/info pages, and googling around when you can't tell the difference between a correct answer and an incompetent, dangerous answer is very difficult as well

No, I hadn't missed your point, and I agree you need a certain "base knowledge" as you put it. There is a vast amount of easily accessible base information available "Results 1 - 10 of about 3,210,000 for Linux tutorials." for a simple search "Linux tutorials". Top of the pile is "The Linux Tutorial", how hard is that? Is that a good site or a bad one for a newbie (or an oldie for that matter)? Having the "base knowledge" so easily available, shouldn't newbies take advantage of it to get to the point where they can use "the often terse and poorly written man/info pages"? (I agree -they often are terse to the point of incomprehensibility- but this is not the main issue here) Anyone asking for help in deciding between two (or more) alterative sets of advice would not get a brush-off from me, or an instruction to RTFM, as they clearly would have attempted to find the answer themselves first. Being capable and willing to learn for oneself is hard as well. cheers, Terence

Steve, On Monday 11 October 2004 07:16, Steve Kratz wrote:

...

A lot of Linux documentation seems to be like that - They often expect a certain base knowledge that makes even a simple subject difficult if you don't know where to find the other knowledge.

That's true, and it can hardly be otherwise. If each piece of documentation must stand alone and cover every conceivable necessary piece of supporting knowledge, then all documentation is essentially a tutorial. And that may not be so bad for new users, it's another kind of nightmare for experienced users who just need some details or to refresh their memroy about a piece of software with which they're basically familiar. I'm not suggesting that Linux documentation is complete. (Although for all I know, it really is and I've just failed--repeatedly--to find certain information.) Writing good documentation can be almost as hard as writing good software, and as you suggest, the skills of a good programmer do not in themselves constitute the skills of a good technical writer. In reality, it's not particularly common to find those disparate skills in a single person. Add to that the multilingual nature of the user base and you've got quite a large documentation challenge. Randall Schulz

The Monday 2004-10-11 at 11:30 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

That's true, and it can hardly be otherwise. If each piece of documentation must stand alone and cover every conceivable necessary piece of supporting knowledge, then all documentation is essentially a tutorial. And that may not be so bad for new users, it's another kind of nightmare for experienced users who just need some details or to refresh their memroy about a piece of software with which they're basically familiar.

There are good samples of documentation. For example, procmail: cer@nimrodel:~> apropos procmail procmailsc (5) - procmail weighted scoring technique procmailex (5) - procmail rcfile examples procmail (1) - autonomous mail processor procmailrc (5) - procmail rcfile procmail (1) is the main one, and difficult to understand. But then, procmailex (5) has enough samples to start a newbie - I know, I was once one, and I configured procmail with that page. The difficult one was knowing about "apropos" :-P Mmm, well, no... procmailsc is more dificult. Another good one is fetchmail, the page is large, but it contains examples. Then, some programs have a "cryptic" man page, but then they have an extra documentation, faq or howto in the corresponding /usr/share/doc/packages/* directory. One such could be postfix.

I'm not suggesting that Linux documentation is complete. (Although for all I know, it really is and I've just failed--repeatedly--to find certain information.) Writing good documentation can be almost as hard as writing good software, and as you suggest, the skills of a good programmer do not in themselves constitute the skills of a good technical writer. In reality, it's not particularly common to find those disparate skills in a single person. Add to that the multilingual nature of the user base and you've got quite a large documentation challenge.

That last thing can not be sufficiently stressed. How can you tell somebody to RTFM if they can not read English? More translators are needed. For example, I, and some others, are helping to translate part of Togan's susefirewall howto, and I find it difficult (it is my first translation), but I find even more difficult finding resources to help me out: like proper free dictionaries for technical expressions, translation glossaries, manuals of style, and such. And surely, I'm not the first or only one translating things. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Tuesday 2004-10-12 at 22:51 +0900, - Edwin - wrote:

"Carlos E. R." wrote:

[snipped]

...

That last thing can not be sufficiently stressed. How can you tell somebody to RTFM if they can not read English? More translators are needed. For example, I, and some others, are helping to translate part of Togan's susefirewall howto, and I find it difficult (it is my first translation), but I find even more difficult finding resources to help me out: like proper free dictionaries for technical expressions, translation glossaries, manuals of style, and such. And surely, I'm not the first or only one translating things.

Have you tried this?

http://worldlingo.com/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

Can't really say that it's good but anyway please try :)

Horrible. I fed it the first line of "The Qijote", the master literary work in spanish, from Cervantes. I got this: Input: "En un lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho que vivía un hidalgo" Output: "In a place of the Spot, of whose name I do not want to decide to me, there is no much lived hidalgo" ¿Do you think it is even proper english? And how come, a proper name (upper cased) is translated? Horrible. :-( But my question/complaint was about how dificult is for human translators, volunteering to translate some linux text, to find things like dictionaries (specially, technically oriented dictionaries) and style guides. I have only seen paper technical dictionaries, and truly expensive. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

(Ted Harding) wrote:

On 08-Oct-04 Danny Sauer wrote:

...

[...] --Danny, who wishes there was a unisex replacement for he/she that wasn't as cumbersome as "one"...

I've seen "s/he" used ...

Sounds like a transexual. ;-)

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 06:03:56 +0200 Örn Hansen wrote:

I remember a college of mine, we were setting up apple computers on a network and I asked about the manuals. His answer was quick and simple, anything computer related that requires a manual is malformed. He is an academic, and I tend to agree with him ... if you are doing any serious work on a computer and you have to spend time, learning manuals ... it takes time from the actual work, you need the computer for.

On that basis I assume he never read his car's handbook, or looked at his VCR's manual, or opened a cookery book... LOL Terence

Örn Hansen wrote:

snip I've................ owned a few VCR's and only once had to take a peek, to get the layout of the program timing functionality.

Huh - that one's easy. I get my kids to program the VCR! David -- Registered Linux User No 207521 The Linux Counter: http://counter.li.org/ “The above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head.”

On Friday 08 October 2004 08:03 pm, Örn Hansen wrote:

 He is an academic, and I tend to agree with him ...

Those who can, DO. Those who can't, Teach. You are vastly too swayed by a few initials behind a name. Computers are the most complex machines ever invented and if you think such a machine never needs a manual you may be qualified, if only to find the off switch. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Hi, On Saturday 09 October 2004 17:35, Örn Hansen wrote:

...

Old IBM mainframes, used to have consoles that operators sat and watched for messages. When an error message, or any other message, popped up on the screen it was in the form of F50347, with some message attached and you had to look up in a pile of manuals, to figure it out. Because the message, was really short. Once you looked into the manual, it often referred to another message F40527 (These numbers are made up, merely to look like the originals and have no real relevance to the original messages), and often you had to look into yet another manual to read that description.

If you read "The Mythical Man-Month," you'll find an anecdote by Brooks about the abject profligacy of making a 26-byte piece of special-case calendar code (for leap years) memory-resident in the OS/360 code. Heaven forefend! The horror of such a hideous waste!! This is what comes of memory conservation mania.

...

Randall Schulz

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 06:03:56 +0200 [...]

I remember a college of mine, we were setting up apple computers on a network and I asked about the manuals. His answer was quick and simple, anything computer related that requires a manual is malformed.

Some believe that way. But I'm pretty sure those who read the manuals could use the computers more/more efficiently than those who didn't ;)

He is an academic, and I tend to agree with him ... if you are doing any serious work on a computer and you have to spend time, learning manuals ... it takes time from the actual work, you need the computer for.

Hmm, I'm sure that's *not* the best way to say "thanks" to those _volunteers_ who spent lots of hours writing those manuals/man pages. [...] -- - E - on SUSE 9.1 | blackbox 0.70b2 | Panasonic CF-L1 Buffalo WLI-PCM-L11GP | copperwalls was here ;) "Look! I am making all things new." - Revelation 21:5

Hi, On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 02:19:51 +0200 (CEST) "Carlos E. R." wrote:

The Saturday 2004-10-09 at 18:25 +0900, - Edwin - wrote:

...

...

He is an academic, and I tend to agree with him ... if you are doing any serious work on a computer and you have to spend time, learning manuals ... it takes time from the actual work, you need the computer for.

Hmm, I'm sure that's *not* the best way to say "thanks" to those _volunteers_ who spent lots of hours writing those manuals/man pages.

Mmmm...

Let us say it another way: A program that can be used eficiently without need to read the manual is probably well thought and designed. If you need to look at the manual, it is just to check a detail, not to study or learn it all.

Well, I wouldn't want to see any websites telling me to read the manual first before using it but I'm thinking about programs like vi/vim here ;)

And that doesn't mean that having manuals is a bad thing. Only that not needing them is better - when possible.

Of course!

Let's refine it further: if you can start using a program and produce reasonable results without reading manuals, or just reading them briefly, it is a well thought program. On the other hand, more complex results may require reading it, or at least consulting.

I *needed* to learn Flash. But as it turned out, even having the manuals didn't help at all. In fact, I even have books about it and still couldn't make sense of it -- guess I have to complain to Macromedia ;) or perhaps be interested first in learning about it...

I wonder I make myself understood :-? I'm a bit sleepy :-)

Same here -- just woke up :) -- - E - on SUSE 9.1 | blackbox 0.70b2 | Panasonic CF-L1 Buffalo WLI-PCM-L11GP | copperwalls was here ;) "The righteous themselves will possess the earth, And they will reside forever upon it." - Psalms 37:29