On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 03:43:30PM -0400, Fred Lieberman wrote: > Hi Scott, > > Thanks for realizing that I am a newbie and this subject is difficult for me. > Unfortunately, most educators and people who write books on this subject > have no idea how to communicate to a person like me. > > I will first check the second webpage. The first one may be well above my > understanding and will take me a long time to decode. >
Much of the Linux documentation project seems aimed at the more advanced user. FreeBSD, as one example and the ArchLinux wiki, as another, are examples of documentation more aimed at getting the job done. While understanding everything is great, I do remember a friend having their article turned down for the TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project). This particular person writes excellent docs, and our joke was that it must have been too clear. :) The way it usually works is that the more advanced write for the more advanced--it's often difficult for we who have been using it for awhile to remember how frustrating it was at first, where to understand A, you had to understand B first, but to understand that required C, and so on---as a friend once said, about setting something up, "To be pointed to cryptic documentation, that tells me to create SSL authentication for smtp as if it were a self-standing instruction, requires more effort than I'm willing to give it." In many ways, a newcomer can write better docs than an expert. For example, I might write, get the tarball, extract it, and do the usual .configure, make, make install. This will be clear to the experienced, but the novice may not even know what a tarball is. (It's a compressed archive file, and not important at this moment.) Whereas the newcomer will realize that the even newer comer will not really be helped by such instructions. Anyway, try the cyberciti link I gave--that is actually chock-full of useful, simply written articles. -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 All: We can face anything. Anya: Except for bunnies ------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [email protected] & you will be removed.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
