Thomas Schmitt schreef op 01-01-2017 14:10:
From the viewpoint of "info" programmers it is obvious that you first
have to learn how to use it before you can draw benefit from it.
But the particular user has a particular need to get information about
a particular complex of problems. No interest in learning anything else
before the current task is completed.
Now how shall the provider of software documentation handle this
conflict ?
Thank you for being honest about everything. This is the first time I
have seen someone actually go into detail about what is so, instead of
people just -- pardon me for saying this thing again -- vehemently
denying everything you say.
As a documentation writer yourself you must run into this yes. I am
sorry it has been such a rough ride. Lol, just kidding :p.
I have never written man pages but your reasoning seems exactly to the
point. Something I would recognise myself. Something you run into,
right.
There are various approaches from books over wikis to community
discussions.
As much as they serve additional groups of users, that much they
diversify
the landscape of available information sources. They begin to
contradict,
spread half-knowledge, or even engage in advertising wars. (The classic
"use original cdrecord" which you can read with many problem
discussions
about optical media.)
I must say here that though the info system is hard to navigate, the
MS-DOS help system was not.
This problem was already solved ages ago (in the 80s). The MS-DOS help
system was very easy to use and provided what Info should or could
provide. Borland Pascal did the same (and equivalents) and although it
used slightly different keys, it too was very easy to use. I always had
great fun and joy reading those entries and I must have read all the
entries in the Borland Pascal documentation just by heart.
I mean just for fun. I would read stuff for fun and I read everything. I
have never used Info with one ounce of joy, and not because I didn't try
several times. It is just unusable to me.
The Vi help system is also unusable until you learn a few hard-to-learn
shortcut keys for navigation. It just doens't make sense. You need to
learn the Vi help before you can get help on Vi.
Really talking of Vim though. But anyway, beside the point.
Yes of course I recognise choosing to use the web as the next
alternative. It's not about me, but what seems to me to be common sense.
I already said earlier that there are only two system: man and the web.
Again, not about me, but it is hard to get out of this line of reasoning
now.
I decided for massive man pages and using Google to find public
discussions
about my software and related topics. If i find such discussions, i try
to
determine impartially the cause of the problem and to propose a remedy.
If that remedy means "use original cdrecord" then be it so.
But in most cases it's "get other media or a new burner drive".
Okay, so you did not host them yourself. That's a very active job.
I dare to contradict. Not your assessment that man vgchange is hard to
digest, but your impression that the programmers or documenters don't
care
for your initial lack of knowledge.
No no, I don't mean to give a broad sweep to everyone. The only
encounter I've had with a man-page writer was a good one, and who was
interested to hear what could be improved. I also offered my help and
did write some improvement (in something) but couldn't find the time and
health to continue on with it; but he recognised the problem and
initiated some improvements himself or by himself.
I think we will always find that the actual people doing the job
understand better what you are trying to say and are also interested in
improving. It is often the people on the side who are not those people,
who just ... interfere with you reaching the ones who are interested.
It's just the same as customer support representatives not passing
information onto real developers.
In these lands; call it the Linux Support Arena, or the Linux Support
Agenda even, people on the side take on the customer support role of
filtering. They act like they try to get the complainer off of the back
of the developer of writer, much like front-desk personnel often does.
The real writer or developer however is often much nicer to you and your
complaints or observations, of course, true.
And thank you for being that person too.
I'm not saying writers don't care, but more that the people who do not
do the writing (like some of the 2 girls responding in this thread) and
so do not experience the difficulties and desire to make the program
easily understood themselves, may not understand.
I feel the further you get from the actual job, the less people will
understand and claim perfection on behalf of whomever they think they
represent, or represent in actual fact.
Not to give any information here but I once experienced the
impossibility in that sense of getting through to some research group at
university because front desk personnel (student advisers and the like)
kept pushing me further to the front and to more official channels.
Whereas the actual people I would have had to work with, would have been
interested in my words. I know this for a fact. I just couldn't reach
them because their assistent(s) kept pushing me away.
The same happens in a hospital: the front-desk receptionist will tell
you you are late and nothing is possible anymore. The actual
departmental receptionists however who do the actual job will tell you
that all is fine. Same day, same moment, same instance. Front-desk =
getting you away or telling you it's impossible. The actual people: no
problem sir, sit down, we'll help you right away.
Front desk personnel just doesn't understand the personnel actually
doing the job, and I feel the same is true of Linux, where "workers"
give support in channels such as these, but may not really be familiar
with the job they are advising about.
And then they say there is no need for improvement, when the actual
workers do feel the limitations imposed by the system.
And are welcoming any efforts, perhaps, by people genuinely interested
in suggesting improvements.
They try to teach us. With limited success. But nevertheless:
"vgchange allows you to change the attributes of one or more
volume
groups. Its main purpose is to activate and deactivate
VolumeGroupName,
"
Duh ?
"See lvm(8) for common options."
Oh. It has family.
"lvm provides the command-line tools for LVM2."
Now it would be time for me to learn some basics about a thing named
"LVM2".
A few days later i would possibly be able to roughly understand what
the LVM
developers invented during the last two decades and how my current
problem
is related to this invention.
Yes I like how you are following the chain of an uninformed reader or
traversing the chain of what someone needs to do and encounters, you
could also say.
I am not trying to sound as if my perceptions are so important, I have
difficulty expressing myself here now.
I mean you are actually looking at what an actual user would see, which
is very nice and thankful for me, I suppose.
So thank you for that, in any case.
But:
you are in some rescue mode that doesn't automatically activate your
volume groups,
Here we see why old programmers try to avoid using fancy
infrastructure.
The answer in an ideal world would be: Learn how to rescue yourself
before
the ship begins to sink.
This does not necessarily mean to master LVM and all other probable
points
of failure. It means to have a fallback strategy that reduces your
personal
stress level in case of emergency.
That is true but it is a very convenient thing to say. I know
dependability is important but the level of dependability you require
from external sources is directly dependent on the fallability of the
software you are using.
This simply means that using Linux, in general, means requiring more
fallback measures than for any other system you would use.
If you are locked up somewhere and it is your only computer, Linux
becomes a great liability to you and your functioning.
You probably can't imagine the personal stress levels I've had in my
life ;-). And most of it, in a certain sense, came from Linux :p.
I just watched some Eddie Izzard show on how computers fail
(https://youtu.be/k6C_HjWr3Nk?t=3m35s, direct hit) and he was not even
talking about Linux ;-).
Personally I don't just have the time or the ability to prepare
everything or to have all my bases covered all the time. Just doesn't
work because I'm already in a "depletion zone" and I am really trying to
get out of that to the best I can. So every little thing helps.
My day, no my entire week, can be ruined by yet another thing going
wrong in the Linux landscape.
What was the last thing? The billion small things going wrong put me off
enough already.
In my case it's a pile of backups and the presence of readily
configured
reserve hardware. (I should do emergency exercises more often.)
I'm in an emergency ;-). I don't have time for emercy exercises, they
are already here :p.
Be aware of what you depend on and prepare for temporarily losing it.
In general that just means building up your life. It doesn't really
require anything specific most of the time, just more stuff or more
people in a general sense, I guess.
Last year our government renewed its advise to store food and water for
two weeks. I immediately re-assigned my surplus body weight to civil
defense
preparations. Fressen fuers Vaterland ! (= Gorging for the Country !)
I have the water covered ;-). My food storages are in the negative :p.
In the real world of emergencies, your mileage may vary, of course.
Dealing with emergencies like that requires surplus when it is not an
emergency.
If you are going to make software (not speaking to anyone here) that is
meant to save people yet itself is as fallible as can be...
Well to me those are just broken promises I guess. I am very upset with
myself very regularly for trusting the promises of Linux. I often
question why I even started on this path. And I berate myself for ever
doing so, I guess.
That's more a problem with the fellow humans than with technical docs.
Nothing is easy if you only dig deep enough into its details.
You mean everything is easy, right.
I had a friend who played chess. ELO rating of about 1900. He would say
"It's easy." 1900 is not much. My other friend had a rating of about
22-2300. He would say "Yeah, chess is a nice game, but it gets a little
boring". So they started playing bridge and then his sister became world
champion.
Everything is easy yes. Except that this statement has never been
helpful to anyone.
No it is perfectly possible to design a system that is fail-safe or that
gets the required information to you at the required time. It's just not
being done. Not enough time for it, I guesss. Not enough time being
spent on it, or not enough dedication and attention.
And thus the "emergency mode" problem turns out to be about the need
for
becomming an insider at an inappropriate moment of time.
Yes exactly. And this is always the case with whatever problem. You want
to focus on solving your problem and not on spending 26 hours on filing
a bug report and discussing it with developers first who want your aid
into solving theirs.
When you need a skilled friend, then technical documentation will
hardly
be able to serve as a substitute.
You would be hoping that Linux itself would be that friend, or that
rescue system. And then it turns out to be your enemy instead.
Who wants you to do more work for them before they will help you.
I am sorry I am being so ghastly and negative about this. My mood
instantly goes up when I use Windows, because normally (although it has
become worse in recent years) Windows just always works.
Windows is less than 50% of what it was a few years ago. I mean its
dependability. It is going down the road of Linux and has acquired its
developer mindset as well.
The technical documentation of LVM could have solved my issue, but it
didn't.
It could have given an overview of the most important tasks to perform,
but it didn't.
The Debian (Ubuntu) rescue system is even worse (for Ubuntu 16.04)
because it gives a dysfunctional menu that keeps popping up as you're
trying to execute commands and gets in your way. And does weird stuff
without you knowing why. Just a failing system, just a programming error
somewhere. But it means your little rescue attempt fails.
Which can mean you need to boot some full Live DVD and this can cost you
much time. I do very little social things in Linux because my Linux is
not dependable enough to make "me" available to other people in some
predictable way. There is so much stuff that can go wrong that
interacting with people is not really possible.
Dependability is the basis of all creation. You can't create when your
tools don't work half of the time. You'll spend all of your time fixing
your tools instead of doing useful stuff. This is why I often regret I
was born or got to use Linux in the first place. Emergency rescue or
emergency backup reduces your stress level to a great extent. But if you
use Linux, all of it may be unavailble.
I sometimes think I should have emigrated to Italy and drowned in the
sea where it was warm.
That would have been a better life than this. Well, anyway, none of your
business I suppose...
