Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 17:54:26 +1000 From: "Young" <young@richardson.apana.org.au> To: "James C. Durham" <durham@sludge.pgh.pa.us> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: adopt a newbie program - Thanks Message-ID: <003601bef1f3$b93bbf00$857e03cb@jdy>
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>I am finally seeing some examples in man pages. This was unofficially >"verboten" for some reason in the old days. > >Yes, it's a great feeling to "figure it out for yourself", but >a lot of newbies are probablly folk who don't have the time and >don't work in the industry, even though they may have all the >grit and determination. Working ''in the industry" must make learning heaps easier, although if one accepts literally the all the postings on this subject some at least have learned their way around without that advantage. If this is the case, I believe these people are in the minority and whilst their opinion is worth listening to, that of the likes of us who DO have great difficulty in comprehending the docs must also be considered. >I think a little unbending of the man page rituals man be in order. Examples are > great! Once you grasp the basic idea, you can use the rest of the page >to figure out how to improve the system or add features or options. >Simply adding a typical useage example to the bottom of the >page would work wonders for some people, I think. Exactly .... my suggestion is to take a leaf out of the documentation style of that *unmentionable major software company* and use pictorial components (a picture tells a thousand words) to aid understanding of concepts. Another thing that would help many newbies is more emphasis on the *easy* ways to do stuff instead of the apparently obligatory *complicated* way ....... eg use of "mtools" (where practical) instead of always using that $#*@&! "mount" lunacy. I realize FreeBSD docs are vastly improved over linux equivalents, but they could still use a bit of adjustment for newbies ...... maybe needs a lot more input from malcontents such as the likes of us rather than relying totally on people whose level of understanding is such that they take so much basic stuff for granted and thus are incapable of producing docs for people at a really basic level. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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