Gavin Clark wrote:
>
> >From: "Christopher Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> </RANT>
> >> There's too much (un|poorly|obscurely) documented stuff in
> >> Unix/Linix. THAT makes the transition from newbie to expert
> >> take longer than it should. College students have the time
> >> to poke around in it 20 hours per day, but the rest of us have
> >> day jobs & kids...
> >> <RANT>
> > <RANT>
> > I find it unbelievable that a computer user expects to know how to use 300+
> > programs by just walking up to a machine.
> > If this where a Windows or DOS
> > machine, would they really expect how to use all the programs on a store
> > shelves without cracking a manual.
> > </RANT>
>
> You CAN do that with a Mac. If you need the maunal to figure it out it's a
> bad program. But I think what he means is not that there is so much to
> learn but that there's no clear way to learn it. You don't even know that
> these tools are there, you discover them when someone on a mailing list
> says:
> 'try # fghd -fh'
> You have to learn just about everything slowly by stumbling across it. I'd
> compare it to playing 'Myst' or learning how to drive by studying the
> engineer's notes.
You understood exactly. I'm a VMS programmer, *NO* OS
has more documentation (except _maybe_ IBM's MVS). The
phrase "The Big (Blue|Orange|Grey) Wall" (color depends
on major version number) acurately describes the VMS doc
set. Fortunately, there is a 2 volume index and descriptions
on the binders and well layed out contents. Plus, the
online help mirrors the hard copy in orgnization.
Those huge license fees pay for *something* usefull...
> Now there's a lot of stuff to document and it's all decentralized so no one
> person or company can just write a manual that covers everything. We'll
> probly end up with a distributed documentation and tutorial system, a cross
> between a search engine, an faq-o-matic, and a hand holding help system like
> on a mac or windows.
>
> luckily half the world's working on it.
It can't get here a minute too soon, IMO.
Ron
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