Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Friday 06 February 2009 10:57:51 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Feb 2009 07:46:02 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Man pages are mostly written as reference documents. Like technical
> > specs, they tend to list the capabilities of the app without giving the
> > "bigger picture overview" as that is assumed to be known.
>
> That's right,they tend to assume that you already know what you want
> to do and are just a means of finding the syntax to do it. The problem is
> that for most software, they are the only documentation provided.

And in the true open-source tradition, where the supplied documentation (aka 
man pages) is inadequate, someone else will write better documentation, or 
howtos, or publish "Dummies Guide to $ARB_APP" and let Google figure out 
where it is.

If Grandma can easily use Google to find new shortcake recipes (an entirely 
reasonable thing for Grandma to do in this day and age), then it is not 
unreasonable for savvy users to have a look at the man page and say

"Oh look, this is a technical doc. Let me ask Google where better docs are"

...

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com