On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 11:46:54AM -0600, cls-colo spgs wrote:
> wow, what a great explanation! (after reading the initial posting, i
> wondered what
> does /dev/null do? (which was the question i was going to post.) then i read
> man
> "null," and thought, "okay, that's what 'null' does." then i came to mr.
> trillich's
> post and really learned a few things. )
>
> sir, if if you're a "second-iteration newbie," i can't imagine what
> "guru-dome" must
> be.
>
> ...well done.
<blush>gosh!</blush>
i'm getting kudos only because i lit a match in a dark room.
my explanation was a bit scatter-shot, at best. someone with
a flashlight or a 4-horsepower generator could really help
out in these situations.
i wish[+] the documentation were a bit[*] more consistent in
providing not merely the mechanics of HOW to run thus-and-such
or use file-for-example, but also WHY you'd want to and what
it'll do for you, with examples showing a significant range
of applications!
in contrast, microso~1 documentation is an example to learn
from (i.e. don't try this at home):
Date
x = Date()
x now contains the system date.
while this 'example' shows all there is about the date function,
there's no illustration showing how to calculate next week's
date from it, or how to determine the first tuwsday of this
month, or whether it contains time-of-day information as well,
and if so, how to 1) find it, 2) use it, 3) change it.
let's leave the microso~1 documentation paradigm where it belongs,
and move forward into human-readable manuals. some good examples i
can think of include "programming perl" and the original "macpaint"
manual that came with the 128 macs in 1984.
--
+"wish" -- from what i've seen on debian-doc and debian-www,
there really ARE efforts underway to improve the dox. but there's
a really HUGE mountain of stuff out there that needs updating,
and it's all over the place. if you have some free time,
check out http://www.debian.org/doc/todo and see if you can
pitch in...
*"a bit", as in the first mate's message to captain edward
john smith of the titanic: "there's a bit of water in the
forward compartments..."
> thx.
>
> bentley taylor.
> (potato on 2.2.16)
