On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 03:35:57PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 05:19:12PM +0100, Wim De Smet wrote: > > On 2/2/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 01:59:30PM +0100, Wim De Smet wrote: > > >> On 2/2/07, Incoming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > More like vividly expressed frustration. After all, he didn't say > anyone was an idiot, or accuse anyone of using Spongebob to soak up > left-over baby's blood, did he? > > > > > > >The trouble with Debian is that is is an old distro, and some of its > > >documentation has become seriously out-of-date. If there was some way > > >of maintaining the documentation along with the code, that would be > > >great! > > Young distros haven't had time to let their docs get out of date -- they > either don't have any or have wrong docs from other distros. > > > > > I second that. The docs on the site are somewhat out of date. The > > stuff in /usr/share/doc is usually up to date though, so is the > > install guide. > > I think there's an interesting research project here -- how to keep > documentation up-to-date in a volunteer organisation. Or in any > organisation for that matter. Developers seem unable or disinclined to > do so. This leads to documentation specialists, but unless they also > develop, they won't have the information they need to write into the > docs. In commercial software houses, where a manual is required, one > ends up with neat documentation that is of very little value. > > Now the Linux documentation has escaped most of this, but it is not > complete, and not up-to-date. > > Time to brainstorm, I suspect. Any ideas (like dependency tracking, > maybe) how to at least identify what documentation is outdated? If we > can't do at lest that, we're doomed. > Hi Hendrik,
There's a parallel thread on the same basic topic. I think the biggest hurdle is the initial learning curve for people new to *N*X coming to Debian (don't know about other distros). I describe it as a brick wall. More experienced users know whats up and where to turn. Long term: yes a smooth documetation system would be great. Short term: Provide, proactively, an on-ramp over that brick wall. I'd be happy to work on this with people. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
