discuss: Thread: Internet discussion re LDP. Request someone take over my HOWTO's

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4zqinn/taking_a_second_look_at_the_linux_documentation/#content 
Taking a Second Look at the Linux Documentation Project: 

Says that it's dead, etc. and asks for volunteers to revive it.  22
comments but many short (several words).  Think 90% should be discarded,
etc.  Opposed to Docbook in favor of ascii-doc, etc.  They don't seem to
understand the difficulty of the work needed.

I'd like to request that someone take over my HOWTO's before I die: Modem,
Text-Terminal, Serial Port, and PnP.  These topics are not obsolete but need
expanding and updating.  The Text-Terminal was written mostly for real
terminals and doesn't go into details about the emulated terminals like
X-term and the Linux (text) Console.  It should.  The new info on modems
is that the modern PCI-E bus can't be used for Linux because no one makes
a linux-compatible modem card for it.  Support for modems in Linux has
never been worse and some people (and places) still need them.  I'm Serial
ports are widely used for embedded systems.  PnP needs a major revision
and name change.

I'm still in fair health but had a mini-stroke a couple of years ago where
I collapsed on the sidewalk and thus may drop dead at any time.

			David Lawyer

Le 16/11/2016 à 08:07, David Lawyer a écrit :

> I collapsed on the sidewalk and thus may drop dead at any time.
>

I hope you the best!

I'm not youngs neither (70) ans can't cope with the LDP more than random 
advice

thanks for your involvement

jdd

Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####

> I'm still in fair health but had a mini-stroke a couple of years ago where
> I collapsed on the sidewalk and thus may drop dead at any time.

Sorry to hear about your ill health episode, David, and I hope you
continue to recover and are around to annoy your enemies for decades to
come!

-- 
Cheers,               « Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est
Rick Moen             endroit de vous rendre injuste. »  ("Certainly, any one 
####@####.####   who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the 
McQ! (4x80)           power to make you commit injustices.")       -- Voltaire 

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 11:44:05PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
> 
> > I'm still in fair health but had a mini-stroke a couple of years ago where
> > I collapsed on the sidewalk and thus may drop dead at any time.
> 
> Sorry to hear about your ill health episode, David, and I hope you
> continue to recover and are around to annoy your enemies for decades to
> come!

You misunderstood.  My mini-stroke didn't seem to do any damage per an MRI
scan.  So there is nothing to recover from.  But I do have some brain
damage (from other causes) that is typical for people my age.  For
example: I don't think as fast as I used to.   While I'm still capable of
writing good Linux documentation I have higher priorities like improving
on my writings on my website, repairing our car and house, exercising for
health, etc.  I think my life expectancy is several more years, but who
knows?  And besides, it may take more than several years to find people to
take over my howtos so I want to provide notice far in advance:-)

			David Lawyer

Le 16/11/2016 à 09:25, David Lawyer a écrit :

> scan.  So there is nothing to recover from.  But I do have some brain
> damage (from other causes) that is typical for people my age.  For
> example: I don't think as fast as I used to.   While I'm still capable of
> writing good Linux documentation I have higher priorities like improving
> on my writings on my website, repairing our car and house, exercising for
> health, etc.


I could have written this myself (for me) :-))

thanks
jdd

Hello David,

The key challenge I see these days is that Linux distributions have 
become increasingly "proprietary" that it's difficult to write to a 
distribution-agnostic way but keep the solution maintainable.  One 
perfect example of this is my IP Masquerade HOWTO.  There are so many 
different ways to store and load an IPTABLES ruleset across all the 
different LInux distros.  This fragmentation gave way to the rise of 
distribution specific documentation for some of these areas.  
Unfortunately, most of this documentation for say Ubuntu, Redhat, Arch, 
etc. is specific to distribution but very thin and gives zero background 
details.

Sure, an LDP document can document a lot of the generic technology areas 
but it's a mountain of work to write, test, and maintain the 
distribution specific stuff.  Maybe strong collaboration with some of 
the LInux distro providers would be warranted here where the LDP and 
vendor documentation teams agree who does what and then link their 
documentation sets together.

--David


On 11/15/2016 11:07 PM, David Lawyer wrote:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4zqinn/taking_a_second_look_at_the_linux_documentation/#content
> Taking a Second Look at the Linux Documentation Project:
>
> Says that it's dead, etc. and asks for volunteers to revive it.  22
> comments but many short (several words).  Think 90% should be discarded,
> etc.  Opposed to Docbook in favor of ascii-doc, etc.  They don't seem to
> understand the difficulty of the work needed.
>
> I'd like to request that someone take over my HOWTO's before I die: Modem,
> Text-Terminal, Serial Port, and PnP.  These topics are not obsolete but need
> expanding and updating.  The Text-Terminal was written mostly for real
> terminals and doesn't go into details about the emulated terminals like
> X-term and the Linux (text) Console.  It should.  The new info on modems
> is that the modern PCI-E bus can't be used for Linux because no one makes
> a linux-compatible modem card for it.  Support for modems in Linux has
> never been worse and some people (and places) still need them.  I'm Serial
> ports are widely used for embedded systems.  PnP needs a major revision
> and name change.
>
> I'm still in fair health but had a mini-stroke a couple of years ago where
> I collapsed on the sidewalk and thus may drop dead at any time.