Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/07/04/21:00:31
Shawn Hargreaves wrote [edited for brevity]:
>
> It strikes me as being a trivial thing to install: download a
> bunch of zips (ok, there are lots of them, but the readme.1st
> file clearly explains which ones you need), unzip them, change
> one environment variable, and add another. That's slightly
> harder than just clicking on 'setup.exe', but only by a marginal
> amount, and hey, we are supposed to be programmers, right? Doesn't
> that mean we are all meant to be at least computer-literate? :-)
> The fact is that 99% of the stupid posts [are] from people who
> haven't even bothered to read the instructions. I simply can't
> understand _why_ anyone would fail to read it! Do they just not
> notice the file? Or are they unable to guess that the name "readme"
> means exactly that? Or don't they know how to view the contents???
> And if they don't [read the instructions], surely they are bound
> to run into trouble eventually, no matter how idiot-proof we try
> to make the process? What I would really like to know is why so many
> people fail to look at the documentation, even after they run into
> trouble.
I don't think the problem is that DJGPP is *hard* to install -- I
think it is that it is *different* to install (as compared to
virtually any pc-based comercial software package). It is also
possible that newbies don't realize that README.1ST contains
download, installation, and invocation instructions; many
commercial packages use README.TXT or README.WRI to hold "release
notes" (by which they mean post-printing documentation errata and
uncommon hardware-specific bug reports & work-arounds).
To make matters worse, the all-important instructions don't begin
until the bottom of the second page of README.1ST (line 150) -- the
first two-and-a-half pages contain a list of all available packages.
So even if somebody *starts* to read it, he may abandon the task
before discovering the instructions.
On top of that, there is nothing (other than the filename itself) to
entice a new user to download & save the file, so even if a he skims
it online before downloading the rest of the distribution, he may
not be able to easily refer to it later off-line.
Furthermore, I believe that your assertion that "we are all
computer-literate programmers" is false. Many DJGPP users are
completely new to computing, and should not be relied upon [yet] to
do anything besides driving Netscape or M$ Internet Exploiter (but
not both).
I think that some of these problems could be alleviated by:
1) Converting README.1ST to HTML, and including a Table of
Contents at the top. I think that people are more prone to
poke around with their web browsers than with their text
editors.
2) Including a copy of the converted README.HTM in at least one
(if not all) of the "required" binary zips.
3) Making sure that all references to FTP & web sites in the FAQ,
the mini-FAQ, and the README, are fully qualified (i.e. that they
include the "ftp://" or "http://" protocol specifiers). This
will allow Netscape users to simply click on the reference to
view the pertainant document. It wouldn't hurt if we did the same
with all of our posts as well.
4) Posting the Weekly mini-FAQ twice per week rather than once, to
increase the likelihood of it being present on any given news
server on any given day (it has usually disappeared from my
server by Thursday afternoon).
--Phil Galbiati
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