Bob wrote

>I'm not trying to be defensive here, but I think it might help explain
>why we're where we are with the installation documentation.
>
>The problem, as you noted, is that getting started puts one on the steep
>end of the learning curve right at the start.  However, once you get past
>that point things start to appear to be "obvious" very fast, and even the
>newest users soon quickly forget all the little steps they took to get to
>where they are.  That makes it difficult to write good documentation from
>the "newbie" point of view.

Your explanation doesn't sound defensive at all. I understand this process,
having done it myself in other contexts on several occasions. It's
difficult for those who understand things enough to generalize steps such
as "edit the grglmux.cfg file to specify two framistans instead of one"
into all the itty bitty steps that that entails.

>I think what we really need is to encourage
>some of our newest users, like yourself, to try to help out with the
>introductory documentation.  Your struggles are still very fresh in your
>mind and your comments and additions to the installation documentation
>would be very helpful for those who will surely be following you.

I've done QA professionally. I know all about keeping a spare machine whose
purpose in life is to test installation procedures from scratch over and
over again.

>Of course the other thing is that some of us feel we are very close to a
>new installation method for the mac68k port and don't want to spend much
>more effort expanding on the current installation documentation.

Sounds like fun! I take it you need some QA and documentation on this
process? (No, really, I havn't done much yet on my NetBSD install, and I
took notes along the way, so I'd happily start over. I have a Quadra 610
with a 2GB hard drive.)

--
Michael "Timberwoof" Roeder
Chief Perpetrator, Infernosoft: Putting the No in Innovation.
mroeder@infernosoft.com -- http://www.infernosoft.com