On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Ian Molton wrote: >> In other words, I believe that whining about these certain >> realities, is equivalent to shooting one's self in the foot. > >Do you think saying nothing will result in documentation materialising >then? > >(no, Im not only being sarcastic). > >How *do* you see vendors behaving in future? will they just 'be' open?
I don't claim to know that. I just think that bashing a vendor who provides us with documentation, for not providing the documentation on a silver platter, is a Bad Idea(TM). It would be my guess, that for every 20 people that ask for the docs and whine, if they were to actually get them, they would stare at them wondering what to do with them. Many of whom would wonder how to fit the newly acquired information into the familiar hello-world.c context. I think the proper way for an individual to acquire documentation is to show they are very serious about wanting to work on the code, by reading the DRI development documentation on the DRI website, and by attempting to get involved first, and do as much as they can without the documentation. Then when they hit a stumbling block that nobody else can figure out, or has time to work on, they can go to the vendor and say "I have specific problem foo while debugging driver bar to work with video card baz to fix problem blog" rather than "I can't migrate from hello-world.c unless you give me docs!!!" I think if someone spends that time, they have shown themselves more dedicated and serious, even if they haven't mastered DRI. In fact I have a feeling that the R300 specs are not as widely provided currently as the R200 specs were, probably due to similar whining from people that has gone on in the past on this list and elsewhere. That's merely my own guess however, and may not bare any resemblance to the real story. The GATOS website seems to claim that they've got R300 specs from ATI. I presume if a serious effort were planned, either by volunteers (including core DRI members, which I think is critically important), or if some company funded the development, that such docs would be forthcoming. Again, just my assumption. Time will tell. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Etnus, makers of TotalView, The debugger for complex code. Debugging C/C++ programs can leave you feeling lost and disoriented. TotalView can help you find your way. Available on major UNIX and Linux platforms. Try it free. www.etnus.com _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
