tlug: documentation/help (was 'old guard' thread)

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Scott Perlman wrote:

> I've spent hours looking for Documentation on many differeent things.
> >From every OS I've used to cars to dancing.  Know what?  In every case
> I had to use a differnt way of interfacing with it, guess right on what
> search terms were populated, and learn the vocabulary in use.
> 
> Ever tried to write foolproof documentation?  No such thing.  Who is
> the documentation aimed at, and what assumptions can we make.
> 
> The assumption is that the User willk now the standard places to look
> for information, and the standard way of accessing it.  (I'll rant on
> AIX not providing decent man pages at length if you want)
> 
> And if you can't deal with using man, the man pages are all duplicated
> on line at this point.  Or is HTML too tough??  What do you want?  
> 
> *NIX systems do what you tell them.  They do not by default ask you if
> you are sure, and not let you do things that may be dangerous.  You 
> want everything redesigned so someone who can't spell ls can help but
> find all the docs, and understand them, than understand its a complete
> redesign.

Also try TkMan - it's a graphical man page browser that lets you do
hyperlink-style cross referencing in the 'See Also' section, has keyword
searching through man pages' bodies, not just what's available with man
-k, and a generallly nice UI.  It's got its own button on the TurboLinux
desktop, even, since I like it so much :).  Give it a try, it's the next
step in dumbing do--er, simplifying the help system :)

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Head of TurboLinux Development/Systems Administrator
Pacific HiTech, Inc (USA) / Pacific HiTech, KK (Japan)
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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