>3) Write it for an older release [...] > 4) Publish it, let it rot. amen to that.
This message is essentially amplifying what Nick says, so please feel free to skip if documentation is not your thing. I may be somewhat biased, but looking at what google serves up for the keywords "OpenBSD firewall" and a few other variations, it is a bit depressing to see several in the first few screenfuls state proudly that it's been "updated for 2.9". A lot of the stuff out there seems to have been essentially "My annotated configuration", which is mainly useful if you need to know what you were thinking when you set it up. An annotated config could possibly also have been a step on the way to a halfway useful first draft if your setup is good. I suppose what usually happens then, before a you're done with that usable first draft, is you start to realize how much work and how much rethinking of stuff you thought you had figured out is actually needed to make the HOWTO into a useful document. Writing documentation which is actually useful to others is quite a bit harder than what most people think. A first draft is never good enough for a number of reasons, and writing (developing) usable documentation more often than not involves spending significant time decoding what would actually be useful to your readers. Never forgetting that you need to have a good grasp of your subject in the first place. And of course, unless your goal is a one-edition dead tree version, plan on spending time on maintaining your work. In fact one of the first couple of google screenfuls will refer to a deadtree thing from I think around the 2.5 days with a website a lot of people out there must be stumbling across thinking it's still useful. Hm. I suppose this was the long version of "I'm still working on my PF tutorial, and I'm planning on both maintaining what's there and adding material as long as people find it useful and I enjoy doing it". Cheers, -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/ http://www.datadok.no/ http://www.nuug.no/ "First, we kill all the spammers" The Usenet Bard, "Twice-forwarded tales"
