From: davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) Subject: Re: Stabilizing linux Date: 14 Aug 1992 13:32:17 GMT
In article <1992Aug13.200750.1247@athena.mit.edu>, komarimf@craft.camp.clarkson.edu (Mark Komarinski) writes:
| Why not have both? Whipping up some on-line manuals that can be printed
| or viewed should not be that much trouble, and everyone will benefit in the
| end.
I think you should be the one to do it, then. I've written 40-50 page
user manuals, and many programs of that size, and I can tell you that a
quality manual takes about 2x longer, per page, than code. That insuring
that the notation is consistent end to end, the style is uniform (chatty
or dry, but consistent), that every fact is correct, exceptions are
noted (this works with 0.96a and 0.96b, but not later versions), and
that there are clear examples for all sections which a user could
possibly misunderstand.
My recent experience with asking for the location of docs rather than
useful hints was revealing; on two questions I got a total of 31 answers
(Linux people are the nicest on the net!), but I got 30 "I don't have
docs, but this worked for me," and one "thaere's a doc on tsx... but
it's not very clear, this is what I think it means." So I now have a few
more lines of notes in my KWS notes file, but no new docs.
This could really be a huge job, you've been warned.
--
bill davidsen, GE Corp. R&D Center; Box 8; Schenectady NY 12345
I admit that when I was in school I wrote COBOL. But I didn't compile.