Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2011 10:18:46 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HAL must die! Message-ID: <20110319101846.f1aa502a.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4D8466F2.7020907@herveybayaustralia.com.au> References: <20110318213641.GA37871@lpthe.jussieu.fr> <20110319081855.bc497dda.freebsd@edvax.de> <4D8466F2.7020907@herveybayaustralia.com.au>
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On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 18:18:58 +1000, Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> wrote: > Thats what I love about FBSD- the documentation is better than any other > system out there, in the handbook but the man pages are the most > comprehensive. Fully agree. As a developer, I like to simply "man whatever" to find out more about it, and if the manpage doesn't answer my questions in detail, I'll find them in the source code which is very tidy and well commented. Quality is more important to the FreeBSD developers than sheer quantity, followed by planned obsolescence. This one of the MAIN points that makes FreeBSD superior to most "competitors" out there. > Its these ports where there is little to no documentation at all thats > the problem. Without the intention to sound impolite: This seems to be a tradition coming from modern Linux. As programs advance that fast, nobody has the time (or feels the need) to adopt documentation properly. > One thing I'd like to do is thank the port maintainers- > even when the app itself may have no man page, some maintainers have > taken the care to document a man page (or at least a doc under share/) > themselves where they can. Very thoughtful! Sometimes, programs offer "-h" or "--help" to give at least a clue about command line parameters to accomplish things you can't do via the program's interface. An example ois OpenOffice: "openoffice.org-3.0.0-swriter -h" provides such a short overview. > A point to make regards HAL is there is next to nix in complete and/or > understandable documentation anywhere for it. Obsolete or not, that is a > bad case... Obsolete / incomplete / incorrect / unusable documentation equals NO documentation - especially from a user's point of view. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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