Hi! >>>>> Matthias Pfisterer writes:
MP> - who maintains the Hurd pages on the GNU website? Those pages were originally written by Trent Fisher, then modified by various GNU people when they moved to www.gnu.org. Then I updated them with the information that I had as of last July or so. Since then, I haven't really ``maintained'' them, but I touched them last. Basically anybody with accounts on www.gnu.org has permission to modify web pages, at their discretion. Of course, it's best to talk with other people before doing something singlehandedly. I created that set of pages, then asked for comments before replacing the old ones. MP> - why are there two almost identical FAQs on Hurd? Can we merge MP> them? I don't think they should be merged, but rather, they should be reorganized. The basic idea in having two FAQs was not so they could be identical... the ``Debian GNU/Hurd FAQ'' was for issues specifically relevant for the Debian distribution of the complete GNU system. The ``GNU Hurd FAQ'', on the other hand, was going to answer questions specifically about the Hurd kernel servers, which would be relevant regardless of whose GNU distribution you are using. MP> - should we say "Hurd" or "the Hurd"? This is a great question for the GNU Hurd FAQ. ;) The word _Hurd_ is a noun, so when you're talking about the Hurd itself, you should always say _the Hurd_. My authority is learning from example by ``This is the Hurd. Welcome.'' ``Cross-compiling the GNU Hurd'' ``I wonder what would happen if I ran the Hurd on nautilus...'' ``... the pragmatic realities of system architecture in the Hurd.'' However, like many English nouns (all of them, if you speak hacker jargon), you can also use the word _Hurd_ as an adjective. ``I work on the Hurd'' can just as correctly be said as ``I'm doing Hurd work''. ``Hurd public relations'' ``interested in Hurd programming'' ``Miles had set this up for Hurd snapshots a while ago...'' ``a Hurd system'' I recognize that the above uses might be confusing to a non-native English speaker, but they are actually quite standard. Think of a word like _government_. MP> - what do you think about seperating an "installation manual" MP> from the "Hurd reference manual"? Yes, that's a good idea. Distribution-specific installation manuals will have to be separate from the generic reference manual. However, like all GNU software, we also want to have complete documentation for the Hurd itself available in the Hurd tarball. It should be possible for somebody of reasonable skills to read the included Hurd reference manual from cover to cover, and understand the complete architecture and implementation of the Hurd. This means the manual must document user programs that come with the Hurd, kernel servers, libraries, and RPC interfaces. The GNU libc documentation as a good example of what this kind of documentation looks like. It is fine to duplicate things like the Hurd boot process in a separate manual, but it is important not to leave gaps in the official manual. If you write an install manual independently, that's fine... just remember that all the Hurd-specific details should also end up in the official reference manual, and all the Debian-specific details should eventually end up in the Debian install guide. Thanks for asking, -- Gordon Matzigkeit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/) Lovers of freedom, unite! \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/) [Unfortunately, www.fig.org is broken. Please stay tuned for details.]
