On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 23:40 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> Lee Revell <rlrevell@email-addr-hidden-job.com> writes:
>
> > On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 23:21 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> >>
> >> HOWTOs are supposed to be hands-on extracts of the full documentation.
> >> They are not supposed to replace documentation, but give recipes and
> >> outlines that make it easier to work with the normal documentation.
> >>
> >
> > Well, tough shit, because all I have time for is a mini HOWTO, unless
> > you're offering to pay me.
>
> It takes less time to add 2 example lines into the man pages than to
> answer complaints on the list.
>
> And it does more for your user base than fixing a dozen bugs.
>
> I happen to be project leader for AUCTeX and preview-latex, and can
> tell you from that position that shaving time off basics from the
> standard documentation of the standard commands is not going to
> improve your total time balance. It will always be more efficient to
> answer once for thousands of people than to answer a dozen times for a
> dozen people even if hundreds just give up without a peep.
>
Well, I didn't develop ALSA originally, I've just contributed patches to
a few drivers. You'd have to ask the authors on alsa-devel about the
lack of better examples in the man pages.
Most users will never have to bother with this stuff - the app will just
give them a dialog that lets them select a sound device.
Also, a lot of CLI apps don't accept ALSA devices in the standard syntax
because they reserve : for something else (mplayer comes to mind).
Lee
Received on Thu Mar 2 00:15:11 2006
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