-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 George Makrydakis wrote: > On Sunday 02 March 2008 02:02:23 David Jensen wrote: >> George Makrydakis wrote: >>> You know what? This can work on windows as well. >> LOL, and joe-sixpack visits LFS and clicks install ubuntu clone >> now! > > What is the lol about?
I think it's a really bad idea for us to specifically try to teach anything to Joe Sixpack that's never even used Linux. Note I'm not saying that everyone who uses LFS had used Linux before they started -- but those that didn't are most definitely *NOT* Joe Sixpack. They had an understanding of how computers worked, at least, and probably an understanding of some of the tasks of an operating system. (Heck, they at minimum knew what operating system they were running: it was not "MS Office 98" (or whatever), as so many users used to say.) Anyway, it's a bad idea because our talents (IMO anyway) could be of much greater use somewhere else: teaching people that *do* already have some experience. (I don't say we should explicitly exclude Windows users, by the way. But I do say we shouldn't focus on them, either: I don't believe they should be the target demographic.) > Since when it was impossible to compile cross - platform compatible > code? How much of the code that we compile is actually cross-platform compatible? How many patches does Cygwin have to apply when they're building stuff for their environment, which actually appears to act like *nix? How much worse would it be when the normal directory structure doesn't even exist? Yes, it may be possible to get it to work -- but only (IMO) via a Herculean effort that (again IMO) could be better used somewhere else. (Like making the text better.) > If you were able to create the scripts through a web interface you > would be cross platform again, for example. Maybe I'm missing the boat here, but I don't think anyone was talking about generating scripts. I think people were talking about showing a reader whatever modules the reader requested, via the web. Note that I don't remember for sure if generating scripts was ever requested, either. But even apart from that, the OS that the user uses to generate the instructions (and educational text, etc., etc.) does not have to match the OS that they build from. Since it's so much simpler to just assume that gcc is present, and that the directory structure makes sense, it's a ton less work to do that in the book's text. But since we'd (well: I'd) rather not artificially limit who can read the book and possibly learn something, as long as we don't have to also specifically cater to them, it makes the most sense to let them read it from any OS, browser, etc. (This is where presenting it over the web is such a HUGE win over running a full program on the client.) > Last time I checked, C++ compilers where available for Windows as > well. Why the apparent fixation on C++ for this? Please be specific if and when you explain: be sure to include exactly why you weren't able to get PHP (or "any script-type language", as you said) to work. (I should note that I haven't read everything you've posted, mostly because the majority of it looked like a huge mess of talking that I didn't want to wade through at the time. But I do remember you said something vague about PHP not being able to handle XML databases, or something like that. You also made some vague comments before that about "required" changes (at least, the ones you thought were required - -- which should also be explained) being equivalent to turning the book into an XML database (whatever that's supposed to be). All of this stuff was simply asserted, with no reasons or examples or anything given behind it. Anyway, if you need to point me to somewhere that you've already explained it, feel free.) Generally, "trust me, X doesn't work for Y" isn't a good way to stop someone from using X. Explaining exactly why X didn't work when you tried to do Y (the specific limits you ran into, etc.), on the other hand, is much better. At minimum, that way the other person will see places that you had issues, and can perhaps figure out another way around them. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHywEWS5vET1Wea5wRAwTmAJ0RO+XXtsW0UG2BOA3ghIbeX3Ev0ACg0h9Y yxSgLjFNkQeQLQz4ZSHWdgI= =n+PE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
