From: Joshua Lokken (postuserjoshualokken.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 18:57:17 CDT

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-postfix-userspostfix.org
> [mailto:owner-postfix-userspostfix.org]On Behalf Of Jim Seymour
> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 4:29 PM
> To: postfix-userspostfix.org
> Subject: Re: Jim:
>
>
> Victor Duchovni <Victor.Duchovnimorganstanley.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Jim Seymour wrote:
> >
> > > Chateauneuf <dupapeTQMcube.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Now THIS is sarcastic on my part and more than a tad
> obnoxious. :-)
> > >
> > > Yeah, but you allowed as how you might volunteer to
> help out in the
> > > documentation dept. at the end, so all's forgiven ;).
> > >
> >
> > Saying one might volunteer, and actually producing
> something of useful and
> > correct are quite different.
> [snip]
>
> Certainly. As my parents used to say "The road to hell is
> paved with
> good intentions." But somebody at least *considering* helping is
> better than them not considering it at all, I guess was my point.
>
> >
> > It is naive to assume that one can help document a system
> that one is
> > struggling to understand.
>
> Not at all. This is how tech. writers work. They sit down with the
> designers/engineers and struggle to understand the thing.
> It is from
> this struggle, most likely due to this struggle, that they're
> better-able to explain it to others who wish/need to learn it.
>
> A capable newbie that has newly understood a principle might well be
> the *best* person to suggest, or even write, improvements to
> documentation. Such a person may know best where the
> documentation's
> weakness' are.

I've been using UNIX and UNIX-like systems for a bit over two
years. I am, as they would say, a newbie. Without exception,
anytime I've had a problem that I just "coudn't" find the answer
to, it was in the documentation. RTFM is not an insult. People
offer that advice for a reason. Not RingTFM is probably the
"cause" for most support questions. Now, as for the status
of this particular documentation, I will agree, parts of it are tough
going, and, yes, I do find myself wondering, "how do they expect
me to know that?", but that's where I get the drive to learn on my
own, I guess. There are mail servers/MTAs that are easier to
configure. The documentation, therefore, likely doesn't need to
explain as much to the administrator. Maybe one of those
would be more suitable for folks who need a very intuitive software
configuration interface. Good luck with your tantrums, I hope you
end up contributing. Thank you.

Joshua Lokken

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