Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:55:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Ross Lippert <ripper@eskimo.com> To: anderson@centtech.com Cc: blackend@freebsd.org, cjuniet@entreview.com, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: docs/41106: FreeBSD Handbook lacks "Desktop Applications" chapter. Message-ID: <200208051455.HAA18220@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <3D4E88A3.8060401@centtech.com> (message from Eric Anderson on Mon, 05 Aug 2002 09:16:03 -0500)
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There is the issue of bias when if comes to apps, certainly. One of the
reasons there are so many configurations to chose from is because there
are so many biases out ther, one per person ('cept for clones, I guess).
FreeBSD let's you have your bias, and that's about freedom.
But the price of freedom is sometimes not knowing what to do with all
of it, and wanting to look to what other people do -- role models, in
a sense. How often it is that we learn cool unix tricks by sitting
next to someone as they do something we never thought of or didn't know.
I'm not sure I'd be psyched about ratings. Too often something gets a
bad rating because the reviewer didn't know how to use it
(e.g. mplayer often gets bad reviews because people try to use the
gui, which sucks compared to xine and the rest). I think anyone
writing a port-testimonial should LOVE the port they are testifying
to, or at least find it to be the best thing for them. I would not
trust configure and howto information from anyone who was not totally
enamored with their subject, but was just covering it as some sort of
round-up of similar apps.
Conversely, we should avoid flame-wars, I think reviews can sometimes
be offensive if too negative, esp if that negativity is misguided (and
it is rare that someone knows enough about something to be able to
intelligently convince you to not like it). It creates bad blood.
But some amount of review is just de-facto by presense or absense.
For example, if I don't see any emacs testimonials I can,
1) newbie: assume there is no love, and maybe I don't want to try it
2) user/lover: correct the lack of love by writing my own testimonial
and standing up for my favorite editor.
I'm more a fan of diaries, where someone says "I did something neat,
here is what it looks like, here's howto", and perhaps someone writes
back and says "here's a neater way to do it". I'm not envisioning a
diary here, but I am thinking about something which is unashamedly
personally biased.
It is important to maintain some standards, maybe docproj styles
articles. You must not just love the app but love writing good
documentation and have a willingness to maintain what you write and
maybe combine it with other stuff.
There was some discussion about a "multimedia" chapter which I started
writing a few months ago (recall my mplayer example). Feedback I got from
it indicated that if one starts off with a "multimedia" type chapter, then
one is basically talking about ports and how to use them, and where and
how that belongs in the handbook is controversial. Probably right. But
I still can't help the urge to want to trumpet this and other video apps
I came to enjoy.
Since we are proposing an experiment, and since the contents will be
biased (in either review or testimonial form), perhaps we should start
by putting up little articles on our own homepages, and convincing
others on doc to do so, make september the "write about your fav app
month". We can submit URLs to be linked to from FreeBSD.org, and if
it takes off and we end up with an explosion of articles (say by
January or else assume we failed), we move to phase II, which
necessarily involves more indexing and organization, perhaps more
automated feedback to authors. If momentum keeps up, I don't see why
it could not be made part of freebsd.org or the /usr/doc as long as a
big fat disclaimer for bias is present. Not to mention that if this
experiment ever becomes "official" we can ask people involved in projects
or port-maintainers if they wouldn't mind jotting down some power-user
notes on their apps.
How does that sound to you?
Oh another source for "good ports" info:
I think bsdtoday.org has some howto's on it for things like VMWare and
stuff, but I'm sure it is just an archive with no one maintaining it
-- yet it remains my first resource for setting up VMWare, I know no
other. There should be another.
-r
>Ross, I think this is a great idea. I thought of something similar to this not
>too long ago, and was going to set up a web site with some of this on it
>(although you painted a much clearer picture than what I had imagined). I'd
>also be interested in rating ports, based on ease of use, installation,
>difficulty level, etc. Now, should this be a freebsd.org thing, or a "third
>party" site? I think it might be important to have freebsd.org officially
>unbiased, so maybe a third party site that freebsd.org points to would be a
>better idea?
>
>Eric
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