Date:	Wed, 11 Feb 1998 17:20:37 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	G DOT DegliEsposti AT ads DOT it
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: docs and ng posting (Was: Re: Newbie question, newbie error)
In-Reply-To:	<C12565A8.003DA24B.00@vega.ads.it>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.980211170045.16612F-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Wed, 11 Feb 1998 G DOT DegliEsposti AT ads DOT it wrote:

> There are, conversely, many people who *read* the docs but *are not able*
> to find what they need. This can be because the people who write have 
> often very different ways of reasoning from people who read, or semply 
> because they could not join the different pieces together. After all we 
> are not compilers and we do not retain everything we read if it is not 
> put down in some convenient way.

I agree, in principle.  However, the fundamental docs of DJGPP (readme.1st
and the FAQ) were, and still are, repetetively amended and improved based
on requests from people who have read the docs but couldn't easily find
the info they were after, or couldn't understand the exact meaning of what
the docs says.  After that many editions and releases, I'd expect that
most of the problems are not with the docs. 

> Sometimes the few time we spend to reply to other's questions means much
> time they could spend digging inside long doc files, downloading more 
> packages, learning how to use them and so on. If you are doing this for 
> fun then it is not a problem (it is part of the fun, after all) but it 
> is not funny if you are doing this for work.

It might strike some that I, too, have a life beyond helping DJGPP users,
and I also have a job which lets me have a life.  Why is my time cheaper 
than somebody else's?  Please don't assume that the time I spend replying 
to requests is negligible: it's not.

> maybe we all here should start replying the "easy questions" and let 
> the "hard ones" to them :-)

Actually, this is a great idea!

> Well, personally I found what I wanted everytime I looked at the FAQs, so
> I don't know how to suggest... maybe it could be useful some sort of index
> of keywords ?

The FAQ already has an index (actually, it has two of them).  Look at the
end of the FAQ.  I suspect that those indices are under-used--which is a
shame, since I make such an effort to index everything there.  If you
think those indices lack some references, I will be glad to hear about
them. 

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