On Aug 3, 4:57 am, Matt Wilkie <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Simply put, there are too many websites. Too many places to look for
> > documentation, a.k.a help. Too many places to find out what's
> > happening and where Leo might, or might not, be going. Prune them all
> > except one I say. Or burn the field and plant a new one.
>

EXACTLY!

I do not know about others, but I find that the absence of
documentation is easier to deal with than the presence of bad
documentation.  When you ask questions framed in false understandings
gleaned from bad documentation, even good answers frustrate by not
reconciling with the documented approach.

>From my early days in IT, I learned to do my homework before I asked
others to help me solve a problem.  I worked with a brilliant sysadmin
whose first question was always - "Have you looked in the manual?".
If your answer was not in the affirmative, the conversation was over.

Bad documentation confuses and there is no clear way to know which Leo
documentation is good and which documentation is bad until you try to
put it to use in specific situations.  Creation dates are no clue
because old bad documentation is often ported to new formats (Sphinx)
without any thought to editing the contents.

On Aug 2, 5:45 pm, "Edward K. Ream" <[email protected]> wrote:

> 2. Leo is, after all, open source, so everything is potentially
> visible, maybe with surprisingly little work.  So another strategy
> would be to familiarize yourself with the code enough to ask
> code-level questions.  I, or others, can then offer advice.

I do look at code - and good code can always be reused.  Leo does eat
its own dog-food, but along with the treasures of "good scripts"
buried in the code, there are the skeletons of abandoned past efforts
(and quite frankly - some bad code) still commingled with the gems.

I ask for the time and you tell me I need to learn how to build a
watch.  I know this is a snarky response especially when you and key
others so kindly and generously give your time to respond to posted
questions.  But "look at the code" sounds like something I might have
heard in the pre-4.0 Redhat linux listserves which were awash in
arrogance and condescension.

You pose that either (1) there is not enough specificity in my
comments for you to respond to or (2) I can take the open source code
and do my own thing.

Well, the code only informs what the tool is.  It does not inform how
to use the tool.  A "Leo Cookbook" would not be a dump of the code, or
a pseudo-code version of the code; it would be a "how to" manual with
complete scripts showing Leo employed in action.  This group's email
traffic is often the only place to find guidance on how to employ Leo
in its current form.  But those communications are often cryptic to
the unwashed.

As Matt so eloquently stated:

> I do wish there were a low friction way to punt the many gems which
> surface in email threads to higher prominence.

That is all that I am asking for.

Bernie Pursley
Ellington, CT

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