On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Jacques B. wrote: (... snip of GRUB documentation ...) > Based on that I have to conclude that what Karl stated isn't > necessarily incorrect (my apologies). It did lack some > clarification differentiating between grub's root file system vs the > OS root file system. However Karl was not correct through knowledge > of this, but rather by accident. He was of the opinion that > anything that was on its own partition had a root and could be > properly referred to using that term... this is, i believe, the fundamental downfall in pretty much all of karl's submissions to this list. on any topic, his *initial* post is semantically incorrect and, only after much howling and shrieking, do we learn that he was simply redefining commonly-understood terminology. in a funny way, we eventually come around to the realization that karl (kind of, sort of) actually understood what he was talking about, but he butchered the explanation in such a way as to make his "tutorial" on the topic not only worthless, but in some cases actually dangerous. your problem, karl, is that you simply have not come to grips with what makes documentation worth anything, and that's that it use precise and universally-understood terminology in a consistent way. and you just don't do this. in one case, you describe GRUB as "the tiny software that let us boot our Linux or Windows operating systems". the "tiny software"? where did that expression come from? and what is its value in your alleged explanation. in that same posting, you don't even use the phrase "boot loader". under the circumstances, what value can your documentation possibly have? how can you possibly claim to be improving the documentation for GRUB without describing it as a boot loader? the mind reels. you do the same thing in redefining the well-established phrase "the root directory" to mean the root directory *of a given partition,* without warning the reader that that's what you're doing. that's simply confusing and potentially dangerous. let me emphasize this as strongly as i can, karl -- it doesn't matter if *you* understand something. what matters is that what you *write* is correct and precise, and that's what's missing entirely from your postings. your terminology is, in a nutshell, unacceptably sloppy. i'm begging you, karl, take this advice from someone who has been writing technical documentation and tutorials for years and still thinks there's always room for self-improvement. as a (sort of self-promoting, whorish example), i have a new web site and i've started a little wiki where i'm throwing together little HOWTOs (yes, the site is still a bit disorganized, i'm working on it in my copious free time. :-) here's one HOWTO -- how to write, build and load a trivial kernel module: http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Writing_your_first_kernel_module now, if this HOWTO is going to have any value, it has to be absolutely correct and use the same terminology that everyone else understands. if either of those is false, then what i've published is worthless crap. see how that works? it doesn't matter if *i* understand how to write and load a simple kernel module -- what's crucial is that i get that information across to the reader. when it comes to documentation, nothing else matters. at the moment, karl, i think it's safe to say that almost no one takes your postings seriously, and that's only because you've thoroughly destroyed whatever credibility you ever had. but there are two solutions to that. on the one hand, you can take the advice of numerous members of this list and start your own blog. if you do that, and write good documentation, then people will come and read it. if it's bad documentation, people *won't* read it. it's as simple as that. on the other hand, if you're truly determined to write documentation for fedora, then you should consider joining the fedora docs project here: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/ but (and let me stress this part ... *BUT*) if you do that, then you need to be prepared for criticism, and understand that, if someone rejects your submissions, it's probably because those submissions are not good enough, and *not* because everyone else at the fedora docs project is stupid. you have a bad habit of not considering the first possibility, and immediately leaping to the second. and that's going to make your membership in any documentation project very short indeed. it's up to you, karl. you can actually listen to what folks on this list are telling you and become a productive generator of helpful documentation, or you can continue being a stubborn, pig-headed irritation to the entire membership. the choice is yours. rday P.S. for anyone who might be interested, i'm now a (the?) official maintainer of the Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide for the 2.6 kernel here: http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/index.html and i plan on doing some major updates in the near future. if you have any cool topics that you think should be added, i'm all ears. -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca ========================================================================
