Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 21:40:20 +0200 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, hm@hcs.de, dfr@nlsystems.com, peter@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: All this and documentation too? (was: cvs commit: src/sys/isa sio.c) Message-ID: <19990622214019.B15249@daemon.ninth-circle.org> In-Reply-To: <199906220842.BAA01553@dingo.cdrom.com>; from Mike Smith on Tue, Jun 22, 1999 at 01:42:05AM -0700 References: <19990622180252.J76907@freebie.lemis.com> <199906220842.BAA01553@dingo.cdrom.com>
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* Mike Smith (mike@smith.net.au) [990622 17:38]:
> > And they might, too. phk has frequently expressed a desire to either
> > write documentation on existing systems, or at least help others do
> > so.
>
> No offence meant, but we can see how much of this has actually
> materialised.
Hence I started the PDP =P
Still going strong...
> > > Documentation is written after the fact, by someone else.
> >
> > That's the worst kind of documentation. In fact, most UNIX
> > documentation is written by the authors. After the fact, admittedly.
>
> In fact, most Unix documentation is never written, being my original
> point.
Which sucks given all the crap the same people tend to spew then about
Microsoft being very closed about their internals.
No documentation is worse than just a sparse manpage. The latter at least
makes it more understanding for all without doing too much UTSL.
And given the aspirations the Project has with regard to commercial support
I find the silent encouragement of just hack and not document disturbing
to say the very least.
> As always, complaining about the _lack_ of something is the wrong
> approach for this project. Step up and fill the gap, or expose
> yourself to criticism for failing to do so. There has to be a way to
> make a verb from Brett Glass' name, but I'm sure you get the point.
And I did/am doing that with the PDP, which at it current rate of support
(that is just me ;) whill be finished somewhere when FreeBSD 6.5 will be
released or so, but I am not complaining about that =)
I am not fingerpointing here, not am I willing to. I just want to ask all
developers to try and document at least the basic ideas somewhere in a
manpage in order to make it easier for others (like me) who want to get
the documentation on the road.
Thanks,
--
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven asmodai(at)wxs.nl
The *BSD Programmer's Documentation Project
Network/Security Specialist <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>;
*BSD: We are back and will not accept no...
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