cga2000 wrote: [...]
I find the exercise useful since as, I believe, A. Einstein once remarked .. if you can't explain it .. you don't fully understand it .. or something to that effect.
Some French author of the 17th century I think (Boileau?): Ce qui se conçoit bien s'énonce clairement Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. (What one conceives well is expressed clearly And the words to describe it come to mind easily.) I don't 100% agree. [...]
I often think that the intrinsic quality of vim@vim.org adds considerable value to an already great piece of software. What I particularly like about it is that you can come up with a naive or even dumb question and within the hour, somebody will come up with the answer to the question you should have asked.
Yes, I agree. Sometimes before your mailer comes around to polling the server again, three or four people will have answered with so many different -- and valid -- solutions to your problem.
-- Pierre Larousse wrote: /A dictionary without examples is a skeleton./ I'll add: The best-coded program won't spread well if it hasn't got good documentation. (Let me rephrase this, since after all there exist some badly-coded and badly-documented programs which do spread well because huge marketing $$$ are spent on them. So let'say: ) Good documentation is a plus for any program; a well-coded and well-documented program will need hardly any marketing effort. The Vim code isn't bad, and it benefits from the Bazaar model, but the Vim documentation is _outstanding_. /Everything/ is in there. It's so complete that at times, it poses sort of a needle-and-haystack problem, but even that has been addressed with features like helptag completion, help hyperlinks, and the :helpgrep command. Then these mailing lists carry that a step further: if RTFM doesn't get you what you want, come here and you'll find "real people" who will show you where to look and what to do.
I am subscribed to about 25 mailing lists at this point and the only one that comes close is the TeX/LaTeX list. Interestingly enough there is very little "trolling" on vim@vim.org .. as if the quality of the posts acted as a deterrent. Thanks cga
The patience and good humor of the old-timers here (first and foremost Bram) certainly acts by virtue of example. Another possibility (but I'm on less firmer ground there): maybe these lists are too confidential to attract a lot of trolls?
Best regards, Tony. -- hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict: 68. Your cat always puts viruses on your dogs homepage
