Fwd: Re: [ale] Re: your mail

[Glenn Stone]

> Pardon the sparadicness of my reply, I've made some comments below:

> I do not in any way believe that an "RTFM" is the acceptable response to
> some (if not most) problems.  Chances are if you get stepped through working
> through a problem, you'll remember how to do it next time rather than if you
> type "man tar" and try and figure that out.  (Anyone ever read the entire
> tar manpage?)  Although, yes, there are some instances where reading the
> manual page is a helpful thing to do (as with any other documentation).

Ummm, depends on the quality of the manpage and the complexity of 
what's going on.  I agree, for tar, RTFM is a lot less effective
than tar -xvzf foo.tar.gz, which will cover 90% of the cases. 
But for something like IPCHAINS, where TFHowto is quite good, 
"RTFHowto (but check the cheat at the top of Section 3 and 
see if that isn't Real Close to what you need alreddie)"
is a Perfectly Acceptable Answer.  

It kinda depends on the situation... if it can be explained in something
less than a screenful, then just giving the answer is probably the better
service.  If not, IMHO RTFM is perfectly valid, because the querent
needs to grok the fullness of the situation before attempting to 
exert his will on it.  

IMHO.

-- Glenn
"Any sufficiently advanced technology
 is indistinguishable from magic."  -- Clarke