Re: Randall, please don't post here

[Randall R Schulz <rrschulz at cris dot com>]

Keith,

[ My own given name being a sensitive point with me, I'm posting this 
despite Harold's request to let his message be the last on this thread. So 
"for the record..." ]


At 11:10 2002-11-06, you wrote:
> For the record, I checked my copy. It didn't have any mention of -rootless.
> That doesn't mean that someone has or hasnt thought to add such a section 
> to it.
> Instead of flogging an obvious novice (lars) who couldn't find the option, 
> which
> is partially understandable as it wasn't documented, I thought perhaps that
> reflection on the current-ness of the packaged documentation would be more
> productive and positive than vented impatience.

Harold Hunt posted this as part of the original thread that made me so cranky:

> > Randall,
> >
> > Be nice.
> >
> > I posted an announcement for XFree86-xserv-4.2.0-15, but I did not 
> > mention that you should use the ``-rootless'' parameter for the rootless 
> > mode.  Rootless mode is in the stable release, but it is still considered 
> > experimental because it may leak memory and it may have certain 
> > undesireable behaviors.  Although, it seems that rootless mode is pretty 
> > much complete because there have not been any significant complaints.
> >
> > I did a little SNAFU with respect to the man page because I updated the 
> > man page, but I did not roll a new release of the man pages package.  I 
> > should probably do that, but I don't think many users will be pleased 
> > with redownloading all XFree86 man pages just to get one new one.  I will 
> > have to think about that one.
> >
> > Harold

This, then, is part of the answer to Keith's inability to find a mention of 
"-rootless" in the on-line documentation.


> Granted, as Russell pointed out to me, it is preferred that people search the
> archives before pestering the discussion list, and I agree with that 
> philosophy in
> theory and practice, but not everyone gets it. (Including my boss.) On the 
> other
> hand, it seems one could argue that we would never need man pages in the 
> Internet
> age, as everyone who needs to know how to use something can just search 
> through the
> archives of the mailing list dedicated to that program. I'm not sure 
> that's the
> best method of disseminating documentation, though.
Given that I see no Russell in this discussion or anywhere in my 
Cygwin-XFree86 archive, I assume Kevin's referring to me.

I'm Randall. "Randy" if you can say it without snickering...


> As for me, I'll be sure to be more specific in the future.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kdt
>
> Christopher Faylor was recently quoted as saying...
> >
> > I'm not sure what you are pleading for but I don't see why asking people
> > to contribute is a terrible thing on any list.  And, pointing out that
> > it is ludicrous to ask hundreds of people (i.e., the people on this
> > mailing list) to check on something like "Is it in the man page yet"
> > when one could easily check this on their on system is not something
> > that even a (shudder) "newbie" should have problems with.

Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA