From: "fission" <fission@mb.sympatico.ca>
To: "Eric Delcamp" <e.delcamp@wanadoo.fr>
Cc: <netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 10:11 PM
Subject: Re: Documentation


> > I'm angry about NetBSD.
> > We need to STOP all current projects, and go to write DOCUMENTATIONS.
>
> <sarcasm>
> Heh, yes!  Let's get behind every other free OS on support for new
> architectures and drivers!
> </sarcasm>

Great ! Then, if I understand well, we are in a race with other free os, and
the goal is to have the largest amount of drivers in the world. That a
different point of view. Noted.

> > But the first writers of documentation should be the programmers. So,
STOP
> > CODING, MAKE DOCUMENTATIONS ! Oh yes, the subject is sooo vast, the
amount
> > of work is sooo important. But we need to begin the work.
> In all seriousness, I've never found the documentation so lacking that I
> coudn't get done what I wanted to do.  Most of the time it just meant I
> had to do some exploring on my own.  If I was really stumped, I would
> email the list and better than 90% of the time I would get an answer that
> satisfactorily explained my problem and showed the answer.

Yes, because YOU (only YOU) have a certain knowledge of what NetBSD do and
how it do. But lots of people don't have this knowledge. Are they exclude of
using it or developping for it ? I don't think it will coherent with even
YOUR goal (you know, the biggest number of drivers in the World).

> > tree (it's just an idea, it seems too drastic ;-)
> > I'm sure we have plenty of ideas about this, and I'm ok to talk about
this.
> I am in favor of a "unified NetBSD guide" but I don't think we need to do
> the Linux thing and develop HOWTOs for every single aspect of the system.
> A certain level of "playing around with the system" should still be
> maintained (IMHO).

Yes, keeping a "certain level of playing around with the system" is the most
brain-damaged idea never seen on theses mailng-lists. Keep going....

> As it is right now (just looking at the documentation page), it looks to
> me like we need one central place to start out with.  It would be
> especially nice if there were certain documentation pages that every
> architecture had (somewhat like now, but only more so).

Good, one good point. Noted.

> But I don't think we need documentation so bad that it's killing us -
> these mailing lists are great! =)

And if I don't have internet access, or your wonderfull T1 drop, what did
you do ?