On Sunday, 1 January 2017 12:36:51 PYST Xen wrote: > Thomas Schmitt schreef op 31-12-2016 11:59: > > Well, "info" is the pet of GNU and thus often better documentation for > > GNU tools than their "man" pages. > > The goal and viewpoint is nevertheless the same: Technical > > documentation > > of programs, not tutorial. > > I personally also cannot use "info". I have tried many times in the > past. Always gave up pretty quickly. Just unusable to me. > > I would need to study a tutorial on how to use info and I don't even > want to. > > > The reason why many large man pages or info documents are so hard to > > grasp is really in the difference of viewpoints. Too much background > > knowledge and too exotic programmer's motivations, i assume. > > Yes exactly. You are assumed to already know the program when you start > reading the man page. > > You are assumed to know everything the programmer knows. This is the > "Linux is easy" fallacy that originates from people forgetting how long > it took them to acquire some knowledge, and now they think it was easy > all this time for them, but they had to become familiar with it at first > as well. > > For example, if you are new to LVM, and you are in some rescue mode that > doesn't automatically activate your volume groups, doing "vgchange -ay" > is not that intuitive. "man lvm" is also not helpful. You will first > need to find the required command (vgchange) before you can get any > help, but you don't know that you need that one because you don't feel > you want to change the vg, you only want to activate it. This can > quickly elude you for some time and especially if you are in a pinch and > suffering already, you may not have the time and mental capacity for it. > You are trying to rescue your system and cannot find the tool to do it > with, but you don't have internet so you can't look it up and..... > > Then some fool will later day: "Why don't you just do vgchange -ay?" And > if you then say "Well that is not that easy to know" they will say "man > vgchange" "easy". > > > Nevertheless i suffer like most other people when i have to study > > foreign > > technical docs for the first time. > > So it is not dumb user versus smart programmer but rather insider > > versus > > newcommer. > > Yes, exactly. Interestingly enough the motto of 33. Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg was: "Works for me". They aimed at getting programmers out of their lethargy because their software not only has to "work for them" but also for everybody else. An interesting write-up is here: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/33C3-Hacker-greifen-nach-der-grossen-politischen-Nummer-3579778.html?wt_mc=rss.ho.beitrag.rdf Unfortunately only in German but Google Translate might help. Well maybe not so much with "The Awful German Language" [tm Marc Twain] Cheers Eike
-- Eike Lantzsch ZP6CGE Asuncion / Paraguay “Do you actually know what you are reading?” He said: “Really, how could I ever do so unless someone guided me?” ... (Acts 8:30, 31)
