On Wed, Nov 24, 1999 at 02:52:20PM -0000, michael@??? wrote:
> But I am sure that it is a matter of personal taste if you like reading
> the manual first, to know what some tool can do for you, or if you just
> hack around, hoping to find the solution somehow. I hate Windows for
> having made the latter so popular.
I agree with both "sides" of this argument, but... any new, large
software package I have started using comes with its own set of
"concepts" and while every manual may try to get this information
across, it very rarely works for me. This may be just the way I think.
My personal tendency is to read the README / INSTALL files and try to
get a working system up with the default (or near to default) configs.
Then, once I have begun to understand how the various executables,
directories, config files and such interrelate, then and only then do
I read the manual from start to finish.
Every time I try to read the manual first, except with the simplest
packages - and exim is not simple ! - I stumble and fall over language
and concepts that seem like second nature to the authors of the
software.
Cyrus scared me off, since the bootstrapping process for getting an
understanding of the package was appalling steep. Exim, OTOH, was
(dare I say it) fun and easy. Note I know that this is an apples and
oranges commparison, but I was looking at installing a new mail
transport and IMAP server at the time.
Regards,
--
Peter Galbavy
Knowledge Matters Ltd
http://www.knowledge.com/
