Date: 22 Aug 1999 03:39:35 -0700 From: asami@FreeBSD.ORG (Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Default FDP docs installation directory? Message-ID: <vqc7lmoksk8.fsf@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard"'s message of "Sun, 22 Aug 1999 03:03:22 -0700" References: <1171.935316202@localhost>
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* From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Let me state first that I really appreciate Nik for cleaning up the documents, handling PRs about docs, etc. I have no problem with that part of what he's doing. I also admire his courage to tackle a very hard problem, that is redesigning the doc system. * Erm, I really don't like to see this kind of thing... People who both Trust me, I don't like it very much either. I would very much like to stay out of this and pretend nothing is happening, especially since I'm not that involved in the Japanese translations anymore. But I read the grumblings in the Japanese mailing lists from those who have to do the actual work, and can't help but notice that they've been yanked around by chains for months. The Japanese doc team has been forced to do a lot of extra work because of all these conversion and reorganization work. Just tonight I tried to fix the japanese/handbook port and gave up after I couldn't get it to work after a few iterations of ja -> ja_JP.eucJP, en -> en_US.ISO_8859-1 type substitutions. That makes me think, why do I have to do this? When I do a massive reorganization in the ports tree, I make sure I fix things that break myself or at least sign up people I can trust who will fix it quickly after I change something. Most of the time, the changes go through at least a couple of iterations of full package builds to make sure everything works ok. That's part of being a manager on a volunteer project. If he doesn't want to do this, that's fine, but then he shouldn't be making decisions. * do good work ripping into one another leaves the audience rather * unsure of how to react, and those being ripped into don't much enjoy * the experience either. I think this has all come about through * misunderstanding rather than malice and if people are getting "angry" * then they already need to go take walks before coming back and * attempting to communicate in public. We are all experienced enough to * know the poor results generated by angry posts. People have been perpetually angry, that's all. It's past the "walks" stage. :) * Nik has just put in a large amount of work here and I would like to * just return our attention to that fact for a moment while those who * don't like his methods attempt to make it sound as if there was * nothing good about the conversion or reorganization work. There was a * lot of necessary work done here, from both a tools and a content * standpoint, and if the look-and-feel isn't spot-on the first iteration * or two, well, that's easily evolved. I'm also sure that Nik has no * intention of leaving tools for formating the various translations * broken, considering how much work he's put into packaging the * translations in a more flexible fashion lately. I hope I'll see evidence to support your point soon. Right now I honestly can't say the doc tree (especially the Japanese part) is in better shape than before. * I think this is simply yet another communications break-down, perhaps * on both sides, and there's no reason to accuse Nik of lying or * otherwise being anything but *confused* about how much communication * had or had not occurred. I asked him something and he gave me quite an explicit answer. Maybe he was confused. Then why didn't he didn't clalify that point when I requested names, I have no idea. * Just knowing how much dust has had to be * blown out of the Handbook and FAQ documents lately (and still remains * to be blown out), I'd say anybody with enough guts to really start * reorganizing our completely dysfunctional docset deserves kudos, not * rocks. I agree in principle, but if the reorganization leaves things in a state worse than before, when there has been a large amount of controversy surrounding the reorganization in the first place, does that still hold true? Also, the thing that really pushed me over the edge is that Nik claims he's only one of us and is not the "manager" that people think he is. This has been patently false as far as I can tell, and it's really unfair to label those who oppose him as Don Quixotes fighting an imaginary dragon. Oh, and please don't tell me to go take a walk. I've sat on the previous e-mail for 2 days, even playing golf (now that's a long walk) in the process. It didn't change my opinion. :) Satoshi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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