discuss: Linux documentation
Subject:
Linux documentation
From:
Steven ####@####.####
Date:
13 Sep 2007 11:29:55 +0000
Message-Id: <309467.4048.qm@web53204.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
At ####@####.#### (the Linux Documentation Project), David Lawyer wrote:
> Although our leader has been inactive for years, he formally resigned per an
> email sent to the staff list on 7 Sept. 2007. People on this list seem to
> think it's fine to continue as we've been doing without a leader. Well, I
> think if we could find a good leader that had the time we would be better off.
Time, technical ability, and affability. This last quality often seems in
shortest supply for oss projects. Our forums seem pretty friendly to me :) even
if some of our pages are prehistory.
... Volunteers ?
How are the html man pages going ? (have i missed some news ?) Hmmm... the idea
is nice, but maybe not so worthwhile considering the poor state of Linux man
pages in general.
One of my pet hates is the slack regard GNU and the kernel team appear to have
for man pages, which imho are a great, simple documentation format. (KDE also
have a beautiful front-end for them. In konqueror open "man:halt" for example).
They are *all* either old, appearing that way, or deprecated for the info
format which... the less said the better.
Lets face it , Linux has a great kernel but the doco and user interface are
really suffering from a lack of leadership and consistency. This is part of the
reason Mickeysoft are still the main desktop player, bit players like Archlinux
get any exposure, and Ubuntu have community momentum. IBM / Novell / Redhat /
LinuxFoundation have ignored this issue too long. Together, they have to win
the desktop before they can relegate Mickeysoft to laughable history as they
deserve. (Really - vista is not much more than an industry sponsored spyware
layer to xp, itself an exercise in locking business and home into the one
platform - though win98 *wasn't* a great OS overall). The recent and on-going
kerfufus over at kerneltrap.org about Con's scheduling patches seem to me
related to this leadership issue. I'm not bashing Linus... He's #1, but not
the desktop messiah we'd like.
... The mailing list ~has~ been quiet :>
- Steven.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Luggage? GPS? Comic books?
Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz
