Philip
Thanks for the replies. I don't think
you or anyone would intentionally make exim
confusing or difficult. I was just phrasing
things a certain way for the sake of argument.
Perhaps it came across badly?
I'm actually very thankful for exim because I believe
in the GPL. I'm sure you know that out of
sendmail, qmail, postfix and exim, yours is the one
with the best license (in my opinion). I would not
lose any sleep if exim keep improving and surpassed all
those other systems combined.
>That's why you really want the newbie to
> write documentation, not the expert.
I am definitely the moron newbie.
I'll tell you what I can do for you based on your wish.
I will assist you in writing the quick install section of exim
docs if any changes need to be made. I will try to
compile exim on Red Hat Linux and Slackware Linux based
*only* on knowledge gleaned from Exim quick install docs and
see if there are any other areas we can improve.
Since I am guessing Linux is the biggest platform for exim,
and we want exim market share to grow as much as possible,
it is vital the quick install for exim/Linux be absolutely
immaculate. Let's work together to do this. I would
consider helping you on other sections of exim docs
depending on how far you wanted to pursue this. I'll
leave it up to you.
I *am* interested in learning more about
email systems and could easily find a book to accomplish
this. However, perhaps by *ONLY* reading your exim
docs and pointing out areas to you I'm still confused on we
could leverage my "ignorance" to our advantage.
All this would take is a little email traffic.
I am a decent technical writer myself having had
to write 100+ pages for the dissertation of my
physics Ph.D.
Sincerely,
Chris
On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 09:48:59AM +0100, Philip Hazel wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Chris Seberino wrote:
>
> > However, even if exim was only aimed at "serious" users
> > and work environments, is it really wise to enforce
> > RTFM by intentionally making things difficult?
>
> Please. The _last_ thing I would ever attempt to do would be to
> "intentionally make things difficult". The technical issues can be
> complex - we have to try to make them easier and accessible, but it
> ain't easy and, from a position of knowledge, it is hard when writing
> documentation to avoid leaving out the one bit of crucial information
> that the newbie doesn't have. That's why you really want the newbie to
> write documentation, not the expert.
>
> I've been around in this business for over 30 years. I've seen this all
> before, many times. Way back in the early 1970's a proposal to give
> beginner computer users immediate access to the interactive timesharing
> system, before they had learned how to use the offline batch punch-card +
> lineprinter system (and thereby gained some background knowledge) was
> extremely controversial. But it went ahead, and world did not end.
>
> --
> Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
> ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
>
>
> --
> ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
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