I freely admit that I'm not a UNIX expert, or even knowledgable to be
dangerous. I've driven vi and grep a few dozen times and installed drivers,
etc, and typed 'make' followed by a bit of other text, but the way I use
documents, is that I read everything I can about the subject and remember
it, largely verbatim, for LONG periods of time. Few people do that, but I'm
one. When you do that, the most obvious thing about the subject and about
the documentation is the inconsistency in the documentation. I'm a stickler
for precise documents. Maybe this is not part of your reality, but it's how
the world works for me.
I've avoided UNIX for all the years, since I was in college in the VERY
early '60's, not that it was an issue back then, and, clearly, though I have
had nearly a dozen dedicated machines running it right here, and I don't any
more, I've concluded that that's not what I want to study. I don't remember
things as well as I did when I was a student, perhaps due to overflow, and
maybe I'll do things differently in the future, but that's the approach to
documents that I can best grasp, so I've staked that territory out for
myself.
It doesn't matter to me that few or many people use the information in
question. I've had it for 20-25 years in some cases and never even used
some of the items myself, but recently, I've seen numerous posts and
received inquiries about one or another of these documents. Clearly,
someone wants to use them. If you don't need this data, you won't serve
anyone by looking it over. If you do, I suppose you'll have to satisfy your
curiosity somewhere. The computer where the data's stored won't care, and I
won't even know. When I see data available somewhere, I consider whether I
want it, and, if so, I find a way . . .
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Max Eskin <max82_at_surfree.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, June 07, 1999 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: Disk Drive Documents
>On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>>I did that, and as you say, they're generally just reductions to CD of the
>>published e-docs, except that they're permanently mixed together out of
>>logical or chronological sequence, so you can't track progress of a given
>>feature set. I wasn't after info on UNIX, I was after info on LINUX.
>>However that's not what THIS thread is about.
>
>If you're already familiar with UNIX, then your point is well taken. If
>you're not, and wish to use Linux, you should get familiar. They are
>almost the same in many instances as far as user interface is concerned.
>
>>I'm not sure clumsy is what it is, but it's inherently solvable if not
>>elegant. If I can break out parts of the document into PCL, then I can do
>>that into POSTSCRIPT as well, and so can you. If the guy down the hall
>>can't, he can ask for help.
>
>I won't be using these docs if they ever are made, so I'll shut up now :)
>
>--Max Eskin (max82_at_surfree.com)
> http://scivault.hypermart.net: Ignorance is Impotence - Knowledge is
Power
>
Received on Mon Jun 07 1999 - 22:02:39 BST