On Sun, Apr 11, 1999 at 12:41:24PM -0500, Ed Carp wrote:
> > book now that wouldbe an idea, i have found teh html
> > "documentation" if you can use that for for a bunch of html
> > files to be very heavy going.
>
> That's because you're probably not getting it from the right place. There's
these were the ones i was refering to in particular.
> only two pages you really need: http://www.mysql.com/Manual/manual_toc.html
> which is the table of contents, and http://www.mysql.com/Manual/manual.html
> which is the actual manual itself. That's only two files, not "a bunch".
if you wish to be pedanitc ain a peculuarly american fashion
please feel free.
the stuff at www.mysql.com looke like someting i could have
thrown together in a few days, or a week and a bit if i had to
do it my self .. back when i was employed as a systems guy in
teh 70's and 80's.
as far as good documentation is cncerned that stuff doesnt
rate very highly, please note the majority of teh stuff put
out thes days falls into this catagory, and all but one item
of teh linux stuff has very bad documentation, if it has
documentation at all.
when i was a young and up and comming buck like mst the the
people who are going to hack me up saying what ive said .. i
used to get rapped over teh knuckles severly by my supervisor
for delviveing 'unfinish' projects. back then the view was that
a finished project included a documentation set that included a
significant section of system interactions and pososble fallout
and or system wide corruption failsafes.
i can only judge software by teh standards that i know, and the
reader would need be rimined that i've been an analyst and
business consultant in this field fro as long as most of teh
particiapats have beel alive, let alone out of shorts, as teh
old saying goes.
when my pension wil allows me teh privaledge of a good 21 inch
monitor and my overal health allows me to string 4 to 6 hour
days togehter without the resulatant week in bed i will rebuild
teh document set om www.mysql.com/manual.... as good
standalone documentation and as a searchable wais document tree.
with regrads to teh other posts concering usng a browser, teh
problems is that browsers were never designed to be docuent
delivery systems, while it is possible to use same for samll
documentation sets teh mysql set if a very good example who it
should not be done and of teh blatantly obvious shortfalls.
to those of you who would cherish this as an attack, please
note programmers varey rarely make good document wtiters and as
a result have poor douementation, software requires good
doumentation to be genuinely usefull and thsi is where this
whole open source sham falls over quite badly. the software
might be ok, but it is only on half or one throd of teh
packaage, teh rest lies in teh the hands of teh documentation
writer .. of whom little is ever heard and notong seen.
anyway, i'd better lay down before i fall of my perch and hurt
th floor.
in closing, these are the opinions of a long time systems
developer and documentation organiser. one now cripled with
sever neurologicaly induced arthritis.
also, i've taken dilivery of my pentium pro (a gift froma
friend) and will be installing beos v4 shortley, this will give
me some of teh documentation tools i need, as well as a new
platform for mysql to investigate.
if anyone knowsa bit about wais and or real documentation
preperation, please email off teh list and we can discuss teh
issues with out having to justfiy any noses we may put ot of
joint .. in th process of rebuilding.
ps, with regards to my earlier comments, monty has pointed me
to a good place to start, a postscript (a4) version of teh
documentation. hopefully this will be better than teh poor html
version.
regards
jonathan
--
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Jonathan Michaels
PO Box 144, Rosebery, NSW 1445 Australia
===========================================================<jon@stripped>
