Learn Technical Writing from Unix Man in 10 Days

Xah Lee xahlee at gmail.com
Mon Apr 30 00:50:32 EDT 2012


On Apr 29, 7:43 pm, Jason Earl <je... at notengoamigos.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 28 2012, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 14:55:42 -0700, Xah Lee wrote:
>
> >> Learn Technical Writing from Unix Man in 10 Days
>
> >> Quote from man apt-get:
>
> >>     remove
> >>         remove is identical to install except that packages are
> >> removed
> >>         instead of installed.
>
> > Do you also expect the documentation to define "except", "instead", "is",
> > "to" and "the"?
>
> > If you don't know what "install" and "remove" means, then you need an
> > English dictionary, not a technical manual.
>
> It is considerably worse than that.  If you look at what the
> documentation for apt-get actually says, instead of just the badly
> mangled version that Xah shares you would realize that the post was
> basically a bald-face troll.
>
> The rest of Xah's links in this particular article was even worse.  For
> the most part he was criticizing documentation flaws that have
> disappeared years ago.
>
> Heck, his criticism of Emacs' missing documentation has been fixed since
> Emacs 21 (the Emacs developers are currently getting ready to release
> Emacs 24).  His criticism of git's documentation is also grossly
> misleading.  kernel.org still has the empty directories, but git-scm.org
> has been the official home for git's documentation for years.
>
> I am sure that the rest of the examples are just as ridiculous.  I tend
> to like Xah's writing.  Heck, I even sent a few bucks his way as thanks
> for his Emacs Lisp tutorials.  However, that particular post was simply
> ridiculous.
>
> Jason

jason, are you trolling me, or me you?

☺

 Xah



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