Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sat, 2005-03-26 at 11:03, David Curry wrote:
But, in my opinion most English speakers posting such messages are individuals who are prone to try "winging it" and haven't bothered to undertake even the most cursory preparatory research.
Yes, if they weren't this type, they wouldn't be installing Linux for
the first time on their own. And the exceptional thing about the ones
you've seen is that they managed to get on the mailing list and post
the question.
'nuff said! It does not matter what one puts in documentation if the documenation is not read!
That's probably a very small percentage of the actual failures. You have to write the instructions for the intended audience. Commercial companies often hire specialized technical writers just to deal with the problem that first-time users rarely do what an experienced developer expects them to do. And they sometimes revise their documentation when informed by the support department that errors from certain misconceptions are happening all the time.
