On Mon, May 07, 2012 at 06:15:46PM -0400, James K. Lowden wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:56:51 +0200
> > Kristaps Dzonsons <krist...@kth.se> wrote:
> >
> > > >> Finally, I question that anyone will find particularly relevant
> > > >> documentation about the NetBSD operating system in the year 2010
> > > >> from /usr/src/share/doc/{psd,smm,usd}. That said, kudos to Perry
> > > >> E. for updating some of these.
> > > >
> > > > I semi-regularly use these documents for reference purposes.
> > >
> > > I'm curious: who else uses these? Can there be a bit of show of
> > > hands?
>
> On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 05:09:10 -0400
> Matthew Mondor <mm_li...@pulsar-zone.net> wrote:
> >
> > I can't say I used them regularily, but I was surprised to find those
> > there when I started using NetBSD (as they were not installed), and
> > read some of those which interested me. At some point I also fell on
> > a partial collection of postscript-converted old BSD documents which
> > were also a pleasure to read.
>
> That was my experience, too. NetBSD is a place to learn,
> and /usr/share/doc is one place to do it. There should be more, not
> less, there.
Yes, as I've said before, /usr/share/doc should be where one goes for
major documentation. One of these days I will find time to get around
to fixing the infrastructure for it.
(the full mission is, roughly:
1. what's installed in /usr/share/doc should be typeset (text,
html, pdf), not troff source;
2. the numbering scheme for the PSD/SMM/USD chapters needs to be
reworked so adding and removing chapters doesn't make a mess;
3. pointing a web browser at file:///usr/share/doc/index.html
should produce broadly useful results;
4. the chapters that are papers (that is, historical documents
fixed in time) rather than documentation (which should be kept
up to date) should be moved to their own area;
5. the chapters that are of no current or future value should be
dropped;
6. the missing chapters should be scraped up from wherever they've
run away from;
7. any new chapters that should exist should be scoped out and
written;
8. severely outdated chapters, which is many of them, should be
revised.
Points 1-4 are infrastructure; the rest is writing/editing.)
--
David A. Holland
dholl...@netbsd.org
