On 08/20/2015 09:39 AM, Brian wrote:
On Thu 20 Aug 2015 at 16:25:20 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Thursday 20 August 2015 15:30:04 Chris Bannister wrote:
To be fair, there are some Debian.readme which make no sense to an end
user. I've seen some Debian.readme files which talk about about how to
compile the program. Hello? Isn't Debian a "binary" distribution.
Yes. So someone - you? me? - needs to write them. I didn't say it was
perfect. But gift horses etc. If you can't do it, and I can't do it, find a
volunteer who can. I usually find the README files useless, or nearly.
There are some excellent README.Debian files. The ones you find lacking
in some way are the ones you should file bugs about with suggested
improvements. It is a relatively easy and painless way to put something
into Debian without being a developer or maintainer. Looking around for
someone else to start the ball rolling is a surefire way of getting
nothing done.
But programmers are never going to be good technical authors. How many good
technical authors do you know who are also good programmers?
The statement is far too sweeping. The answer to your question is "lots".
This side thread seems to have taken on a life of it's own. So I guess
i'll throw my two cents in.
I both programmed and tech wrote - that ok english? - before retirement.
So, I should be a good candidate for helping out the documentation
cause. But there is a problem especially if you are talking about the
README files. If I knew enough to correct the file I wouldn't be reading
it in the first place. As for howto's and such, I really don't know
enough to comment. Once I get an application up and running I've usually
forgotten what I did and would have to back engineer to figure things
out. By that time I'm so sick of the whole process that I run like hell.
Gary R.
