Re: HOWTOs: reality check

[Gustavo Henrique <gustavoh@sysadmin.com.br>]

At 00:34 24/09/99 +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
>The linux HOWTO pages are pretty bad as well.
>Each time I had to dig thru pages of useless comments, jokes, copyright,
>history, definition of fairly common terms, just to get  at the five lines
>of info I needed.

that's true, but it IF people start to write openbsd HOWTO's, they dont
have to copy the way linux does it, which has a lot of useless content.

>HOWTO can certainly be useful, as long as they have some qualities:
>* conciseness (yep, less than manpages, but still)
>* accurate
>* up-to-date
>
>Now, when it comes to writing and MAINTAINING such documents, the going gets
>tough...
>
>More often than not, someone writes a page, then just plain disappear, or
>forgets about upgrading it.
>
>You want more documentation ? 
>
>You write it, AND YOU MAINTAIN IT.
>I know that there's already enough documentation I have to keep up-to-date,
>or that I wish were up to date without adding yet HOWTOs to that list.

i guess having HOWTO's would be easier for you devel people, since
some documentation that was(n't) lacking would be written AND updates
by someone else.

Regards,

- Gustavo Henrique Maultasch de Oliveira
<gustavoh@sysadmin.com.br>