Charles, et al --
...and then Charles Curley said...
% On Tue, Jun 27, 2000 at 12:08:28PM -0400, David T-G wrote:
% ->
% -> and occasionally fix systems :-) I would say that this *is* becoming a
% -> FAQ and it's because folks aren't reading the docs.
%
% The docs are user hostile, and not merely difficult to read. For many
% people they are impossible to read.
OK; I'll accept that.
%
% They are difficult or impossible to read because 1) they are organized by
% function name. This is dandy if you have function phoo in front of you and
% want to know what it does. It is utterly useless if you want to phoo, and
% don't know that it's called phooing, and the name of the function to do it
Well, what about some simple searching through the manual? Admittedly,
you have to realize that '/' is the search character, but we do need to
draw the tutoring line somewhere :-)/2
IMHO I think that a reference-format manual is great, but that it would
be nice to *also* have a procedure-format manual or guide handy. So who
wants to write it? :-)
% is phoo. Reason 2) is because it assumes a lot of knowledge on the
% readers' part. Things like the fact that procmail exists.
That's part of the "newbie education" issue, but it could probably be
made better.
%
% -> It seems that mutt is cresting one of those points of explosive growth
% -> where we see a massive influx of clueless newbies -- perhaps, due to
%
% Clueless newbies indeed -- many if not all are coming to mutt and Linux in
% general from Windows. Mail on Windows is trivially easy: you fire up
Yep.
% Outlook Express, put in a bare minimum of information, and sit back and
% wait. You get a trojan horse, it eats your hard drive, you install the
% next version of Windows, and repeat. Real simple.
*grin*
%
% -> pretty darned dumb even when we look back to the days when we were young
% -> and lusers ourselves.
% ->
% -> Unfortunately, this translates directly into more traffic on the mailing
...
% -> the Original Ones are getting tired of this crap and are unsubscribing or
% -> strongly contemplating it. I can hardly blame them; I saw the same
% -> decline on the sun-managers list a couple of years ago, and went that
% -> route myself.
%
% I concur. What we need to do is lower the traffic on this list.
Yep. Can we kick off users who ask stupid questions except for me? :-)
%
% -> of getting this information out. Without going into a drawn-out call
% -> for votes or anything silly like that, what does anyone think about
% ->
% -> - asking, most very humbly, the doc writers to spend some time on the
% -> FAQ or Quick Start, even at the expense of the full documentation,
% -> just to round it out and provide something to throw at requesters
%
% This would be good.
Yeah. I've since learned that there isn't any sort of "documentation
group" for mutt, so we have nobody to ask. Time to call for volunteers,
all of whom -- much like me -- will certainly be pressed for time anyway.
But it seems to me that that will be the way to go forward.
%
%
% -> - somehow more strongly expecting those who post questions to post
% -> summaries (even if it's a summary of lack of response)
%
% This is excellent. As a programmer and technical documentor myself, I can
% tell you that this is far and away the best thing the neophyte who has a
% question can do to return value to freeware.
The new mutter (hey, I only *just* got the "... so and so muttered ..."
attribution!! :-) is also more likely to be excited about getting so far
and happy to chip back in, especially if we can promote summaries as
helpful and get them in front of everyone's eyes.
%
% -> - a mail server (my favorite idea :-) to which folks can forward such
% -> requests that spits out a form letter to the requester pointing him
% -> to the proper places to search (archives, FAQ, manual) and the manual
% -> section where the option(s) is(are) defined
%
% You get to write the procmail recipes. :-) It's a good idea but a lot of work.
Actually, I figured it would be a perl bot :-) Yeah, it would be work to
do, but fun. Oh, well.
%
% -> message saying "Don't ask; read first" until the user figures out how to
% -> get rid of it, and the Makefile in the tarball could require that one
% -> read a similar message before the compile will proceed...
%
% This will kill interest in using mutt faster than anything I can think of
% short of making it an exclusively Windows package.
You just might have to work a bit to convince me that this (the former, I
mean) is a bad thing. Experts won't mind it, I should think, and let it
scare off the newbies until they've learned a bit of *NIX.
%
% But at least you are thinking of things and tossing them out there for
% consideration. Good for you.
Thanks :-)
%
%
% --
%
% -- C^2
%
% No windows were crashed in the making of this email.
%
% Looking for fine software and/or web pages?
% http://w3.trib.com/~ccurley
:-D
--
David T-G * It's easier to fight for one's principles
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The "new millennium" starts at the beginning of 2001. There was no year 0.
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