> It needs to be reliable and easy and, sadly, it can't require lots of
> reading.

reliable, of course. easy, fine. but without
requiring lots of reading, how?

plan 9 concepts are different enough that people
have trouble getting their heads around it,
stipulated. but is there really a shortcut to
understanding?

the whitepapers are short. coming to plan 9 as
a unix admin, a lot of what's in those papers
only really made sense to me in retrospect,
after i'd already absorbed the ideas through
direct contact with the system.

the man pages mostly conform to the original
unix spirit of single-page documents. the
insistent habit of embedding command flag
options inline in paragraphs is cumbersome
for quick reference, but fine.

the source is generally compact and readable.

the fqa attempts to explain some of the stuff
that's not obvious from all of the above.

but how do we transmit deep knowledge of 
strange computing concepts that experience
teaches are rarely happily received (new users
always know better, and/or demand their favorite
tools) without inducing the candidate to read?

sl

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