I think Mike's comments are very apt. I have installed a number of Linux
systems at home and at work. My work is at a university, and the systems
there are going to expose quite a few of my colleagues and student workers
to Linux for the first time, and perhaps through Linux, to ham radio. The
/usr/doc/HOWTO directory is something special, just listing the directory
gives one an overview of an impressive number of aspects of Linux. The
very presence of a document about ham radio is important visibility for
our hobby. The nature of that document could, of course, be different, and
still provide this point of contact with ham radio.
I hope I am not being overly contentious here, but I feel compelled to
react to some of your reactions to Mike's comments:
On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On 12 Apr, Mike Bilow wrote:
> > I am not so sure I support the idea of abandoning the HOWTO format. Since this
> > is the accepted document delivery model for Linux, we get a lot of exposure to
> > non-hams who may become interested in ham radio through Linux. We get free
> > exposure in all sorts of places with quasi-official status, such as the
> > hardcopy LDP collections put out by Yggdrasil and Red Hat. And, of course, we
> > are included with every distribution right out of the box.
>
> Responses to these :)
>
> 1> The LDP may decide it is no longer to be a HOWTO no matter how much
> you'd like it to be.
Maybe I missed something along the way, could you provide information or a
pointer to information about the proposed redefinition of the HOWTO
format? Perhaps someone else will be willing to take up the conversion or
re-creation of a conforming Ham-HOWTO.
> 2> The hardcopy books are now getting too large and recent editions
> have chosen not to publish a large number of HOWTO documents, the
> HAM-HOWTO is one of those.
No, but the HAM-HOWTO is still in the directory on the CD-ROMs I have used
and the ftp sites. And most of the books include a CD-ROM, although, never
having purchased such a book I don't know how complete the CD-ROMs are.
> 3> There are better ways of gaining new recruits to the hobby.
This is the "no-panacea" argument. Just because a method may not be the
best method doesn't mean it isn't a useful method. I would imagine if you
surveyed hams about how they first learned about the hobby you wouldn't
find any single answer given by more than 10 or 20% (don't hold me to
exact numbers here, I'm guessing).
I think everyone appreciates the work that you have done in the past on
the HAM-HOWTO, and if you feel that doing it in the same way, or changing
the way you do it to conform to new LDP requirements aren't things you
want to do, that's fair. But I'd like to see this evolve into a discussion
of how somebody else can continue the tradition, perhaps in a different
way, and how that could complement the new directions you wish to explore.
73,
Al N1AW
+----------------------------------+
| Albert S. Woodhull |
| Hampshire College, Amherst, MA |
| [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| http://minix1.hampshire.edu/asw/ |
+----------------------------------+
