Re: [seul-edu] Re: HOWTO-howto

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 02:44 PM 9/10/00 -0500, Dave Prentice wrote:
>To all:
>    Well, since nobody responded to my request for help on the format of
>HOWTO documents, I will answer my own question. Perhaps some other newbie
>will be spared the hours of frustration I went through finding and then
>figuring out how to read HOWTOs. To all of you, this stuff is obvious;
>however, to those like me it is not. Perhaps this could be added to FAQs.

Dave --

Before you end up feeling too cranky, I should remind you that this is not
primarily a list that provides *general* Linux support -- it is a list
focuesd on educational applications. While there are a few people here who
do answer general technical questions (I'm one of them), there are not as
many as you would find on a basic Linux support list, such as
linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org or whatever beginner support lists exist that
are specific to Red Hat. Perhaps if you added a general-purpose list of that
sort to your collection of resources, you would be spared future "hours of
frustration".

In this case, I did not answer your question because I didn't know the
answer. I checked my Debian installations, and they provide the HOWTOs in
*.txt.gz format, not a format with "weird formatting". So I didn't know what
you were talking about. Had you, for example, mentioned the file extensions,
I would then have known what you were asking about, and perhaps been able to
help. 

Instead, I left it for someone who actually uses Red Hat to answer, since
you did pose it as a RH-specific question. Perhaps the more technical end of
this list consists mainly of people who use distributions other than Red
Hat? I don't really know. But I doubt it is that we are as mean spirited as
it sounds like you are assuming ....

BTW, as to your explanation ... does RH *really* not include .txt among the
"other formats"? For a beginner, reading that in a text editor would be
simpler than  mucking about with Acrobat or even Netscape. And your advice
about "double clicking" on HTML and PDF files may work with Red Hat's
default X installation (which uses KDE, if memory serves), but not with all
Window Managers.


--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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