From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18201 invoked by alias); 10 Jul 2005 18:26:59 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 18120 invoked by uid 22791); 10 Jul 2005 18:26:55 -0000 Received: from h-68-164-203-246.nycmny83.covad.net (HELO dberlin.org) (68.164.203.246) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:26:55 +0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] (HELO localhost) by dberlin.org (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.3.4) with ESMTP id 8200731; Sun, 10 Jul 2005 14:26:51 -0400 Subject: Re: Some notes on the Wiki (was: 4.1 news item) From: Daniel Berlin To: Gabriel Dos Reis Cc: Gerald Pfeifer , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, Michael Cieslinski In-Reply-To: References: <1120855271.7999.13.camel@linux.site> <1120870920.7757.22.camel@linux.site> <1121017996.7757.52.camel@linux.site> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:26:00 -0000 Message-Id: <1121020011.7757.74.camel@linux.site> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2005-07/txt/msg00350.txt.bz2 On Sun, 2005-07-10 at 20:14 +0200, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > Daniel Berlin writes: > > | On Sun, 2005-07-10 at 19:31 +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote: > | > I noticed that the Wiki is getting more and more of a third place where > | > to find documentation in addition of gcc/doc and wwwdocs, and a parallel > | > universe at that, with quite some duplication and inconsistencies. > | > | Have you not yet discovered that this is because people find the > | documentation we have to be hard to work with, and submitting patches to > | write in texinfo and whatnot to be a pain in the ass? > > > I disagree with the notion that because our current documentation is > imperfect, we shall move the corrected one to the Wiki page. I think > we've gotten too far in putting valuables bits of GCC outside our main > documentation repository. This happens because 1. People don't want to write texinfo, and continually submit patches to update the docs little by little (remember, people work on docs the same way they do on code. Most of the time, what they have written is not complete yet. Which is fine for the wiki, but not for our cvs docs, it seems), whereas this is trivial with the wiki 2. The docs people seem to want to write or use don't fit anywhere in our current scheme. > > [...] > > | However, the fact that he found the current documentation *entirely > | worthless* enough to write a 104 page document on how everything > | actually worked should tell us maybe there is something wrong with our > | documentation implementation, what we cover, and how we cover it. > > It tells us that the documentation is inaccurate; it does not tell us > that we ought to move it to the Wiki. Sorry, i completely disagree that we should force people who want to write docs to do it only on our terms, considering how many people like writing docs and how they write them (little by little in incomplete pieces) If people find it easier to write on the wiki, let them. > > [...] > > | I find it sad that you are complaining that people have created a > | resource *they* find useful, instead of one that *we think they should > | find useful*. > > The issue is not complaining that people do useful things. Rather, > whether the updated and and more useful documentation of GCC shall be > moved outside GCC main docuementation sources. We should be taking what people do and moving it, not saying "you can't write it where you want".