From: Victor Duchovni (Victor.Duchovnimorganstanley.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 20:33:30 CDT

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On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Jim Seymour wrote:

> 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.
>

Right, but the tech writers don't do the job alone, and for complex
systems (rather than end-user tools) the results are usually very poor
unless the engineers provide most of the material for the early drafts. A
newbie volunteering to document the systems as a solo effort, with no time
committment from the designers is not credible. I am involved in the
review of the upcoming O'Reilly book, this takes time, even with the
author by no means a newbie...

> 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.
>

Sorry, not in the case of Postfix. Newbies can write narrow HOWTO
documents, but not core documentation.

--
        Viktor.

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