RE: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

RE: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Robert Collins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Soren Andersen [mailto:soren_andersen@speedymail.org]

> So what I am addressing is a perceived (on my part) need for 

Soren, this is *discussing* it, if you wish to address it, then
contribute a patch - to the web site, the FAQ - wherever you think it
should go.

I don't say this to cut short the discussion, but because no-one has
disagreed in any substantial way with what you are saying, and no-one
has steppted forth to do it....

Rob

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RE: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Soren Andersen]

On 15 Jan 2002 at 10:41, Robert Collins wrote:

> Soren, this is *discussing* it, if you wish to address it, then
> contribute a patch - to the web site, the FAQ - wherever you think it
> should go.

I'll get to work on it, for sure.

> I don't say this to cut short the discussion, but because no-one has
> disagreed in any substantial way with what you are saying, and no-one has
> steppted forth to do it....

Oops! I must be slipping ... if I'm not getting somebody to strongly 
disagree with me ...heh heh

 Best regards,
  Soren Andersen


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RE: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg Has Been Reorged

[Gary R. Van Sickle]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com [mailto:cygwin-owner@cygwin.com]On Behalf
> Of Robert Collins
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Soren Andersen [mailto:soren_andersen@speedymail.org]
>
> > So what I am addressing is a perceived (on my part) need for
>
> Soren, this is *discussing* it, if you wish to address it, then
> contribute a patch - to the web site, the FAQ - wherever you think it
> should go.
>
> I don't say this to cut short the discussion, but because no-one has
> disagreed in any substantial way with what you are saying, and no-one
> has steppted forth to do it....

Uh, guys: http://cygwin.com/lists.html.

Pretty well done, whoever did it.  And it's been up since at least the crack of
noon.

Let this be a lesson to everyone to:
1. RTFM
2. STFML and TFWS
3. WTFPMA[1] the next time a newless cluebie stumbles in here and for some
reason the urge to bite his head off rears its ugly head.

[1] Watch The Fricken Potty Mouth Abbreviations.

--
Gary R. Van Sickle
Brewer.  Patriot.


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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg Has Been Reorged

[Robert Collins]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary R. Van Sickle" <g.r.vansickle@worldnet.att.net>
> Uh, guys: http://cygwin.com/lists.html.

Cool - Soren, you're off the hook :}.

> Pretty well done, whoever did it.  And it's been up since at least the
crack of
> noon.

Yes, CVS will tell if you're interested. I haven't looked but my hunch
is Chris.

> Let this be a lesson to everyone to:
> 1. RTFM
> 2. STFML and TFWS
TFSW?

Also, WTFWPFC!

Rob


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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Soren Andersen]

On 14 Jan 2002 at 21:32, Robert Collins wrote:

> contribute patches. Contribute the links *you know* (come on' after more
> than a years use you must have collected a few useful links). Don't worry
> about whether they are the best links, that's what open source doco is for!

Well, yes, exactly! Collectively this List's readers must possess in one 
form or another a prodigious pile of reference knowledge about where to 
look for answers. If we pool our knowledge we will achieve the several 
benefits of both lowering the noise level on the List (perhaps) and making 
it more interesting, and also of helping others (and probably ourselves) to 
more quickly target rich sources for areas where enriched knowledge is 
required.

> If *you* don't, and noone else *does*, then nothing will happen, and in 6
> months Chris will say "I've been cogitating..."

Sounds pretty frightening! ;-)

I am picturing "Spike" on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (American TV show, 
sorry for the non-global reference) emerging from the shadows with that 
malevolent smirk on his face, saying "I've been cogitating.."  ;-[

   Soren Andersen




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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Soren Andersen]

On 14 Jan 2002 at 7:59, Tim Prince wrote: 

> And, without experience specific to Cygwin, no one knows exactly which
> variations on the standard behavior of free software will apply on Cygwin. 

I was hoping and expecting that someone would make this observation. It's 
one that I think is important to keep in mind -- there have had to be, I 
think I can be confident in stating, *some* particular differences in the 
way that some things "work" on cygwin vs. how they work on other platforms 
that are considered Unixen (with GNU/Linux being the obvious major 
reference point at this stage of the game). 

I didn't really have in mind examples like this one however: 

> For example, has anyone documented the ways in which cygwin 
> differs from linux in application of code and data alignments?  Does 
> anyone think the newlib mailing list is a helpful place?

According to my understanding I see this as being eminently ON-topic for 
the cygwin List (or even for cygwin-developers), whereas I was addressing 
the area of topics of a more general user nature, where that user is not 
someone trying to write code for/to Cygwin, but rather was at a much less 
high-level engineering-oriented phase of "usership," and where there might 
therefore be a question whether the question is Cygwin-OT or not. 

In case it isn't at all clear what I might mean, say I might be thinking of 
someone who is trying to build standard Open Source or Free Software 
packages on Cygwin -- not trying to extend or doing a major porting job to 
some app or write an entirely new application, but simply trying to "get 
[foo] to build." I have spent countless hours trying to get  pretty widely- 
used packages to build using Cygwin tools and trying to understand whether 
and how my Cygwin environment was "broken" as the expression goes. 

So what I am addressing is a perceived (on my part) need for clarification 
or contemplation about what comprises a user question that falls within the 
intent of the main cygwin List. Somebody here will (or can or has) stated 
"what is the List intent" very succinctly and will probably probably feel 
that they've nailed it down and it doesn't deserve or need lots more 
discussion, and may be so confident in their assertion that readers will be 
drawn to agree; but a little time and observation may reveal that there are 
many special cases where a gray area is entered and the brief and brusque 
and cut-and-dried doesn't seem to have been enough to cover everything in 
that light. 

A minor but good case in point that occurs to me is the recent discussion 
on List that dealt with enabling certain key-bindings in bash (msg # 42891, 
"Copy and Paste into Console"). One of those bindings was to make the 
'insert' key do something useful (paste from the Windows clipboard into the 
cygwin bash console). IMO this kind of question and the knowledge that was 
shared is very OT because, for one thing, it is Windows-specific (the 
clipboard as such doesn't exist on other platforms, although surely 
analogous entities must..). So this is an instance of a divergence between 
"standard" behavior of a Gnu tool and a "special behavior or modification" 
that this tool's Cygwin port has. For another thing, I think it can be seen 
as reasonable to assert that having an efficient and "confortable" shell 
environment to work in is a prerequisite for a lot of users to getting more 
specific and interesting work done. It certainly is for me. I'd like to 
think that the Cygwin project's folks would see this as an area that needs 
support, very legitimately. It may not particularly *interest* some 
individual who is of capability such that they are preoccupied with the 
innards of Cygwin or some major piece of Cygwin, but the mere fact that it 
isn't especially stimulating to such individuals to deal with such 
questions doesn't make the asking of them invalid or the effort to provide 
helpful and accessible support on them unimportant. 

This is what FAQs are for, of course, and a lot of info exists in them. 
FAQs are only any good if a user finds them and reads them, of course. And 
they may need constant upkeep and re-writing to be really useful. 

   Best Regards,
     Soren Andersen 



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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Fractal A.]

Here is a good place to look for info about flex.  I found some good stuff
about bison there.  

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/

Have you ever tried using Daves Quick Search Bar?  It's a convenient helpful
search tool.  

http://notesbydave.com/toolbar/searchdoc.htm


--- Tim Prince <tprince@computer.org> wrote:
>
> If there were a flex FAQ or a flex 
> mailing list, would it not show up on gcc.gnu.org or a newsgroup or 
> google search?


=====
Fractal A.                    fractala@yahoo.com

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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Tim Prince]

Robert Collins wrote:

> 
>>given with Cygwin run the same 'on cygwin' as they do on any
>>
> Uni* -like
> 
>>platform (and therefore general documentation 'out there' will apply
>>
> too),
> 
>From experience on this list, I can assert that this is an unsafe
> assumption. Many many many questions are asked that are solveable by
> simple examination of existing documentation - like the recent lex->flex
> question (while I didn't know that answer, that's gotta be a flex FAQ!).
>

Well, I'm sorry about asking, but I'd been looking for the key to that 
for 2 years, and only recently has cygwin come up to speed to be able to 
build and run my application.  With the help of the latest incarnation 
of 'info flex' and recent improvements in vim syntax coloring, I did 
find both the latent bugs and the features which aren't supported 
exactly the same by lex and flex.  If there were a flex FAQ or a flex 
mailing list, would it not show up on gcc.gnu.org or a newsgroup or 
google search?

 
> 
>>BAL [By And Large] clearly DON'T want anymore to answer questions like
>>"what does man do" or "how do I login to bash").
>>
> 
> Good point.
>

But another one where there are minor gotchas for people who have 20 
years experience on Unix with shells which pre-date free software.
And, without experience specific to Cygwin, no one knows exactly which 
variations on the standard behavior of free software will apply on 
Cygwin.  For example, has anyone documented the ways in which cygwin 
differs from linux in application of code and data alignments?  Does 
anyone think the newlib mailing list is a helpful place?

 


-- 
Tim Prince
tprince@computer.org



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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[David Starks-Browning]

On Monday 14 Jan 02, Robert Collins writes:
> > The task (of writing up re-directions for some of these categories or
> > inquiries) can be done once, -- to set up more precise explanations
> and
> > info at the site; or it can be done as its been done, repeated over
> and
> > over again as similar questions appear on the list and are answered
> one at
> > a time.
> 
> I can make an assertion here:
> contribute patches. Contribute the links *you know* (come on' after more
> than a years use you must have collected a few useful links). Don't
> worry about whether they are the best links, that's what open source
> doco is for!
> 
> If *you* don't, and noone else *does*, then nothing will happen, and in
> 6 months Chris will say "I've been cogitating..."

As you might expect, this has come up before.  I would consider
devoting space in the FAQ for pointers to basic UNIX resources.
However, I'm not the person to locate the resources or judge which are
suitable and which are crap.  (After 20 years of UNIX, my skills are
such that man pages and google are enough!)  If someone can distill a
few good resource pointers, I'll provide an item in the FAQ for them.

That is, when I get my home internet connection working... :-(

Regards,
David
(Cygwin FAQ maintainer)


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Re: Proposed Mailing List Page Reorg

[Robert Collins]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Soren Andersen" <soren_andersen@speedymail.org>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 3:17 PM

>  - can one safely assume that a noobie who finds Cygwin grasps that
the
> tools that are packed with cygwin (bash, login, man, for example)
aren't
> specific to Cygwin at all but long predate it, and

Can we? The newbie who finds cygwin because they are told to by a
friend, may not have any unix background, and therefore see *nothing* to
cause them to realise that the tools come from elsewhere - particularly
Win32 users, where MS provide *everything* (or so they may think).

>  - can one safely assume that noobies will think "these tools that i
am
> given with Cygwin run the same 'on cygwin' as they do on any
Uni* -like
> platform (and therefore general documentation 'out there' will apply
too),

From experience on this list, I can assert that this is an unsafe
assumption. Many many many questions are asked that are solveable by
simple examination of existing documentation - like the recent lex->flex
question (while I didn't know that answer, that's gotta be a flex FAQ!).

> and
>  - can one safely assume that noobies who might even guess at the
first two
> points might not think anyway that "maybe I'll find friendlier, more
> sympathetic folks to hold my trembling timorous hand here, than I
would if
> I ventured onto onto the Wierd Wild Web in search of generalized help
on
> these tools"? (Point of this last is not to characterize the cygwin
list as
> "nasty" or to propose that it self-characterize this way, but to
suggest
> that a LITTLE warning of a slightly stern-sounding nature at the
"front
> door" might be expeditious and appropriate given that folks on this
list
> BAL [By And Large] clearly DON'T want anymore to answer questions like
> "what does man do" or "how do I login to bash").

Good point.

>
> Unless there is one single extremely knowledgeable and
encyclopedically-
> oriented person who knows where to send people (and such people do
exist I
> think, but whether one will care to undertake this is another
question)
> then I think that a little project (or a little "coordinated
multi-person
> collaboration", for lovers of ornate terminology!) needs to be created
to
> develop and verify a list of
> resources to send such visitors to.
>
> The task (of writing up re-directions for some of these categories or
> inquiries) can be done once, -- to set up more precise explanations
and
> info at the site; or it can be done as its been done, repeated over
and
> over again as similar questions appear on the list and are answered
one at
> a time.

I can make an assertion here:
contribute patches. Contribute the links *you know* (come on' after more
than a years use you must have collected a few useful links). Don't
worry about whether they are the best links, that's what open source
doco is for!

If *you* don't, and noone else *does*, then nothing will happen, and in
6 months Chris will say "I've been cogitating..."

As a side note: Perhaps we can have a homepage link in setup.ini (and
thus the package listing too) for each package?

Rob


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