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| Author |
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| 25 new of 256 responses total. |
davel
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response 29 of 256:
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Nov 4 11:30 UTC 1994 |
Agreed. Though at 2400 bps that involves an awful lot of *slow* repainting
of the screen.
Valerie, the trouble with doing it the way you suggest is that it makes
short, simple explanations long & complicated, not to mention redundant.
Also, once you start, where do you stop? You're soon replacing every
occurrence of "^C" first with "control-C", then with "hold down the
Control key and press the C key". "Be careful to type a semicolon and not
a colon here." It quickly becomes almost impossible to sort out the
information that's really relevant to the real question.
(I guess my point is that this needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
If one quick parenthetical remark will prevent newbies from getting lost,
do it. But be prepared to assume a reasonable level of intelligence &
competence *before* the parenthetical remarks take over the explanation.)
<davel drowns (is immersed (placed entirely (fully) into water (H2O)) and
expires (dies)) in his own words (combinations (arrangements) of letters
(alphabetical entities) conveying (carrying) a single (one) meaning
(denotation))>
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popcorn
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response 30 of 256:
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Nov 4 13:10 UTC 1994 |
<grin>
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sidhe
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response 31 of 256:
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Nov 4 19:11 UTC 1994 |
Alright! I don't know about roz, but I've had just about enough of being
talked down to about this! The sad fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that some of
us don't have Unix manuals available to us, and seeing as the number of people
using the internet doubles every year, and, considering that less and less of
these people will have knowledge of unix systems, or access to a bookstore
where they can get a manual, I suggest that the problem be handled now, before
anything get's worse! The idea of having a seperate conf for it is great, as
those of you who don't want all the "oversimple" explainations won't have to
bother with them; those of us who need them, however, will have access to them,
online, when we need the assistance! imagine how much trouble your helpers
might be spared by this!
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steve
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response 32 of 256:
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Nov 4 23:04 UTC 1994 |
What are you proposing Chris? Perhaps you've already stated it (sorry
if thats the case), but please say it once more, how you would structure
things.
Your input is *very* valuable. We staff, founders, or long time users
of Grex have lost most (all?) of the perspective of the new user. How
would you build things?
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roz
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response 33 of 256:
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Nov 4 23:27 UTC 1994 |
I'm not feeling talked down to, but I think it's easy for folks who know Unix
to consider Unix-literacy to be easier to get than it looks from our end.
I just don't have the time to learn more than getting-around skills here.
So, does Grex intend to be accessible to folks like me? Then somehow or
somewhere, I need to be able to learn to do things. Right now, my
preferred solution is to e-mail Valerie asking for her help. She then
tells me what my problem is and either takes care of it or tells me how
to do it. I really appreciate that, but I feel a bit guilty about taking
advantage of her good nature.
So if the helpers get certain questions again and again, it might be in
_their_ interests to have that information in a clear format that is easy
to find.
BTW, one of the very best teachers I ever saw about Grex was kaplan. Can
we draft him to write some of this stuff?
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remmers
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response 34 of 256:
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Nov 5 13:48 UTC 1994 |
Trying to make things easy to find was one of the reasons I suggested a
hypertext format, so that "see also" cross-references could be put in,
such as the case in which the instructions say "create a file" and you
want be able to jump quickly to the instructions on how to do that,
then jump back to wherever you were. That could all be done using
lynx, which we have on grex and which provides a simple, easy-to-learn
interface to the user.
If Christopher felt that my suggestion about books was "talking down",
well, I didn't mean it that way. I was just pointing out that there is
a lot of info out there that's at a beginner's level, that's relevant
to using Grex and other similar systems, and that's more easily and
widely available than you might think -- you can find it in bookstore
chains such as B. Dalton's and others. The observation is quite
correct that the internet is opening up computer access to a lot of new
people; publishers know this too, and I see a lot of new books
appearing about accessing online services, written at a beginning
level.
On the other hand, I agree that it's desirable to have good,
easy-to-find documentation online here, to save time and for other
reasons. People interested in writing it might want to think about
putting it in hypertext format.
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chelsea
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response 35 of 256:
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Nov 5 14:32 UTC 1994 |
I'm not a techie and I sure am glad to have the _Unix for Beginners_
book just five feet from my computer. I use it as a reference when
I'm stuck and can't imagine anyone trying to get around this place
without either a good working knowledge of Unix or such a handy
reference. Any conference help entered online will be useful, for
sure, but will not take the place of something in hardcopy with
an index that doesn't feeze up or crash.
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davel
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response 36 of 256:
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Nov 5 14:33 UTC 1994 |
Or drag when the load is heavy.
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kentn
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response 37 of 256:
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Nov 5 19:03 UTC 1994 |
I agree with :34-36.
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sidhe
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response 38 of 256:
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Nov 5 19:58 UTC 1994 |
perhaps of more importance would be that those of us whose B-daltons are too
@#$! ignorant to carry unix books (like mine) would have the same (virtual)
referance work there for us! Another problem that you guys may not be aware of
is that many of us are logging in via telnet from whereever we happen to be;
i'm certain that even if i did have a unix manual, that it would manage to
not be with me that one time i really needed it, like say, when telnetting in
from a friend's terminal. And, no matter how many books are put out on the
subject, I know for a fact that the bookstores in rural america are fortunate
to have something on DOS 2.x! I was in Marion, OH this past summer, and, while
i Found a few people who internetted around, there was nothing on the subject,
anywhere in town! One of them said that they relied heavily on online help as
their primary source of info regarding unix, as they couldn't find anything
else! Those of us who know what they are doing on unix are typically college-
educated, and learned most of what we know then. I'm not one of these people.
I'm high-school/trade-school educated, and I'm trying to learn the utter basics
now, and I find it ironic that I should be met by ant kind of resistance to
this effort.
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rcurl
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response 39 of 256:
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Nov 5 22:46 UTC 1994 |
In some ways you are at frontiers of technology. The % of people that
can do anything on systems like these is miniscule. Frontiers are
known to be rough in various ways, and NOT pre-prepared with hand-rails,
escalators, etc. In fact, I *like* my frontiers rough, and challenging.
Some day, this will all be like eating pap - and the adverturous will
be off somewhere else. So, do you want to be spoon fed, or have a few
challenges in life?
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kentn
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response 40 of 256:
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Nov 6 00:59 UTC 1994 |
sidhe: Ever hear of mail order? Book clubs? Using the telephone to
call a better-stocked bookstore elsewhere? Having a relative from a
bigger city pick up what you need?
Like it or not, you will not gain complete Unix knowledge from a single
source. Ask questions here on Grex, read the Unix-related Usenet
groups, talk to other Unix users, and get yourself a couple good Unix
beginner's books and read them!
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tsty
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response 41 of 256:
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Nov 6 07:54 UTC 1994 |
and read the man pages here too ...
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sidhe
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response 42 of 256:
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Nov 6 11:55 UTC 1994 |
I am not looking for complete unix knowledge. I am, however, looking for better
(simpler) unix info than is currently provided. tsty, i will look up the man
pages; thank you. As for challenge vs. spoon fed- the entire reason that this
would bee on it's own conf is so that those of you who want the frontier feel
don't have to be bothered with it. This is hardly frontier work, anymore. i
know. Along that analogy, the scouts and furriers and traders have been out
here for centuries now, and I'm just a new settler coming in, looking to make a
comfortable homestead. Hell, this is even post-train; Gophers have been up now
for years, allowing us non-unix knowledgable people to get virtually anywhere
we want. So, like it or not, my predecessors on the internet, we're here, and
this is just the really brave ones. Wait a year, or two at the most, and you'll
wish that you'd set this conf up, if only for the amount of helper calls
you'll be fielding.
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chelsea
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response 43 of 256:
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Nov 6 12:20 UTC 1994 |
Methinks sidhe is dead-right with that last sentence.
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moo
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response 44 of 256:
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Nov 6 14:14 UTC 1994 |
OK some of you may remember this: A while ago, I proposed a new rpg .cf in
responce to all darksun items on rpg. Rush limbaugh took the words right out of
my mouth (although I hate the man) in his new book:See I told you so. rpg has
now become darksun, and hasn't changed one bit since this summer! So now, I am
re-requesting a new rpg .cf! But even in the face of my Zeal, I will admit
that I know absolutely nix about setting up a .cf, or FWing for that matter.
For this reason, I'm requesting some sort of FWing info, whether or not my
original request is granted, just for conviniece sake.
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rcurl
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response 45 of 256:
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Nov 7 06:14 UTC 1994 |
Re #42: one difference with Grex is that we are a multipurpose "board"
providing a conferencing system, a unix shell, party - and other
modalities. *Most* others, like FreeNets, provide a much smaller suite
of uses. It is moderately easy there to put on on-line help, that covers
all uses. Here, the effort has been to provide many uses, but without
complete, simplified, users guides. It is in part a matter of what the
volunteers working on systems like these have time to do. They just
can't do *everything*. It is probably more important to make it clear
the bases of each system - what they provide, and how much help is
available - and then users can choose the system with which they are
most comfortable. There is not reason for one system to attempt to be
all things to all users.
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remmers
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response 46 of 256:
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Nov 7 11:29 UTC 1994 |
Maybe I'm dense or something, but Christopher, I don't see why you're
getting so upset. You say that people are resisting the idea of having
lots of online help for beginners, but in looking through the previous
responses, I can't find any such resistance. Valerie said that the
idea of a "FAQ" conference is what she has in mind for newinfo anyway,
in my remarks about hypertext I was thinking out loud about something
different from the conference format that would make it even easier to
look things up than they'd be in a conference, etc. I'm not sure why
you interpret this as unfriendly.
Rane has a point in #45 -- because of the fact that Grex strives to
make lots of different things available, writing up documentation to
all of it in a standard format is not a small task. The philosophy
here has always been that if there's a package that's in fairly wide
use in the Unix world, then we make it available on Grex. As a result
we have a number of different user shells (sh, csh, tcsh, zsh, bash,
lynx, menu shell), a lot of different editors (ed, es, vi, emacs, jove,
joe, pico), several different mail programs (mail, elm, pine), several
different chat programs (write, ntalk, ytalk), plus a gopher client, a
couple of differnet ftp clients, etc. etc. If there *is* resistance to
writing a "complete online user guide to Grex", it may come from the
realization that it would be a huge job to do it.
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carson
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response 47 of 256:
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Nov 7 11:35 UTC 1994 |
...however, we're more likely to be friendly about such things. sidhe,
I'd like to think that the newinfo conference is being set up to handle
concerns such as yours, and that the on-line helpers are better than
any sort of on-line text you could get. I don't think that what you are
seeing is so much resistance as it is an unwillingness to volunteer for
such a task. Considering the number of things that need to/could be done
on Grex, I wouldn't take such a lukewarm response as negative.
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popcorn
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response 48 of 256:
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Nov 7 13:47 UTC 1994 |
Argh! It's not politically correct for me to say this, but I feel very
frustrated by this discussion. I've put a lot of effort into being
sure there's a lot of stuff in the info conference *now* that is very
accessible and written for the level of new people. Yes, it's embedded
in lots of other, less relevant, items. But there is, for example, an
introduction to basic Unix commands, with a request for questions about
anything that needs any clarification, but I think nobody ever looks at
it. Certainly nobody ever comes to me and says "the part with the
example of the 'ls' command doesn't make any sense". To me, this
either means I've written something so perfect that nobody ever has any
questions about it (yeah, right), or that nobody ever reads it. Either
nobody reads it because the pointer to it is buried where it's hard for
new people to find it, or they don't read it because people just don't
read things. In the 1990's, everybody wants sound bites; our attention
span is 15 seconds long. I *want* a FAQ or newinfo or whatever type of
conference to be accessible, but I have very little hope that people
would take the trouble to actually look stuff up there.
set flame=off
Re 44: moo -- join the info conference (at the "Ok:" prompt, type
"j info") and then type "read 26" for a list of fair witness commands.
The main commands you need to know are "set login" and "set logout" (to
change the screens people see when they enter and leave the conference)
and "enter" to add a new item. The fair witness needs to enter the first
item before anybody else can enter items and responses in the conference.
Shall I go ahead and set up a rpg conference with you as fair witness?
Do you want any co-fair witnesses, or would you like to go it alone?
(Either option is fine.)
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rcurl
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response 49 of 256:
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Nov 7 15:07 UTC 1994 |
Its not you, Valerie! Info now has so many entries on multitudinous
topics (and some on almost no topic at all), that it is frustrating
to go there and *look*. I almost always just use "find" on keywords,
trying to go directly to the right response. The approach, however,
overlooks the logically organized Items! It all comes down to what
has been said - an index, or a hypertexed version thereof, would make
it so much more "user friendly".
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sidhe
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response 50 of 256:
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Nov 7 15:36 UTC 1994 |
First of all, let me apologize for being a bit of an ass. I've been
moer than a little ill lately, and I think that the frustration of being
physically miserable had some effect on my statements, above.
Now, let me state it more clearly, and less harshly (you guys don't
deserve harshness, you're only trying to help). I merely suggest that this
project should be undertaken before anything gets any more crowded with
new people who don't know unix from Eunuch. The way things are headed, he
says as he rubs his crystal ball, any online service that doesn't have
extesive help networks set up for begginner's usage will collapse under the
weight of all the questions and accidents. I agree, wholehartedly, that a
living helper is much better, but I certainly wouldn't want to be one in
a system becoming overcrowded with people who don't know where to look up
the relevant data on their own. I'm afraid that until I read robh's www
home page yesterday, I wasn't at all certain what "hypertext" was, but
now that I realize that it is much like lynx, I think that it would be
an ideal platform. I just had an idea! If anyone is willing to put up with
my stupid questions, I'll help organize the hypertexy system with you.
I do have the perspective of a newbie, still, but I know enough to not
drive you nuts (hopefully). What do you think?
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popcorn
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response 51 of 256:
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Nov 7 18:13 UTC 1994 |
After I entered #48, I talked about it with my friend at lunch today.
He suggested that we replace picospan's help command with something
friendlier, since it isn't very helpful to the new user and it doesn't
cover topics other than Picospan. He suggested doing it in hypertext.
He pointed out that new people really don't know enough to go to the
info conference and start looking for things, but that well-organized
hypertext might make it easier for them to find things.
This dovetails neatly with the earlier responses about a hypertext
system of frequently asked questions. I was figuing it would be a pile
of work to create yet another obscure command that new people wouldn't
know how to find, but if we called a hypertext help system *named* "help"
then I think it's very intuitive and a great idea.
For folks who don't know what hypertext is: it's a system where you
read a page of text and certain words are highlighted. When you
select a highlighted word (or phrase), you get more information on that
topic. The "more information" consists of another hypertext page,
also with highlighted words that you can select. Some examples of this
are the help screens in Windows, Hypercard on the Macintosh, and the
text in Lynx.
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kentn
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response 52 of 256:
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Nov 7 18:20 UTC 1994 |
I think it's worth a shot. popcorn's information from the info
conference would be a starting point, as would information from
relevant Usenet FAQs, and other Grex cfs and items. We already have a
committee (?) for hypertext applications on Grex--should we have a
sub-committee for hyperhelp, or just add sidhe to the committee and put
him to work? The latter, I think :)
Let me add, too, that I don't mean to be rude when I say buy a book
(I'm kind of tired out by intelligent college kids here at UM who
won't crack a book to save their lives). Go ahead and ask questions,
sidhe. Just don't be surprised if at some point you are referred to
one of the several excellent beginner tutorials already in existence
(as an alternative to on-line help--sometimes a hardcopy explanation
*is* best).
Anyway, a hyperhelp system is probably where we're all headed
eventually, so let's give it some thought, planning, and action! I'm
willing to help with such a system, also.
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carl
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response 53 of 256:
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Nov 8 10:12 UTC 1994 |
I'd be glad to assist someone who wanted to put together such a set
of hypertext documents for Grex. It would be easy for me to set up
an area under /usr/local/lib/lynx for document preparation. I could
also create a sample file which could be copied and then edited
(rather than creating multiple documents from scratch).
If there are several people interested in this, I'm sure we could
ask the staff to create a new group for us, which would make the
easier. Would anyone be interested in coordinating the effort?
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