-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jerry McAllister
Well, both types of documentation are needed. The official formal
documentation, which, of necessity , needs to be written in a rather
formal language style and other explanitory docs for newbies and
those of us who need a more conversational and step by step style
at least to get started at things. There are several good books
out with more conversational style and some reasonable web sites
with tutorials.
The only problem with many of the web sites and even the books is
that they tend to take a personal preference prejucidial attitude
toward things rather than encouraging readers to try out various
things and giving them instruction toward those other choices.
Some examples are installing and using Gnome. To read some guides,
one would think it is impossible to run FreeBSD without Gnome.
Some seem to imply it is absolutely necessary to install a third
party MBR/boot manager such as Grub to boot FreeBSD, just because
they like it. Some tend to think the only possible shell to use
is bash or sh and anyone using something else can't possibly get their
work done. The list could go on.
That sort of thing may be present in some books but it wasn't in
mine.
I will say one thing though, that a 3rd party book must specialize on some aspect of FreeBSD if people are going to buy it. People that buy documentation usually have a more specific need than that they just want to boot FreeBSD on whatever spare PC they have lying around. So, for example in my book all examples were Bourne shell, because the focus of the book wasn't on running shells under UNIX. However I never wrote in the book that that readers should only use Bourne. In fact, on the section on system administration I specifically said Bourne and csh wern't optimal for new users, and tcsh and bash were more popular, followed by an overview of the major shells. Please be careful where your swinging that tarpot and brush in the future.
Sure, I know that. I probably should have continued the qualifier I
used for the web site and said something like 'some of the books' since it
would be what I meant. And the prejudices are different from one source
to the next - it isn't the same everywhere. It is just something to be
aware of. Even the official Handbook has a few personal prejudices that
aren't really as absolute as the text may imply, though I haven't looked
for any lately and it continues to be updated.
////jerry
Ted Mittelstaedt
Author, The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide.
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com/
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