Fedora Documentation Group

[Timothy Murphy]

Karl Larsen wrote:

>     I have been trying to join this group. I have run into problems at
> gpg.MIT and the hoops I need to jump through to be able to write a
> single word! This has gone on for a week and I have dropped out. But I
> showed them my problems, and they said they have not had a new member
> for a year. I know why :-)
> 
>     In my opinion the documentation for Fedora is very poor to bad.

I'm just trying to emulate Karl, in joining the Project.

There do seem to be some unnecessary hurdles to surmount
before one is accepted into the inner circle.

I managed to send my key to mit as requested,
although I agree that the method prescribed for this in the wiki
<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/UsingGpg/>
does not actually work.

I used kgpg rather than "pure" gpg,
and this allowed me to register the server <hkp://pgp.mit.edu:11371>
before sending the key.
I'm not sure if giving the port helped the key on its way.

I think the Fedora documentation that actually exists
is usually pretty good.
The trouble is, there is very little of it.
My initial impression is that there is an excessive formalism in place,
whereby the content of a document takes second place
to its agreement with the style and format prescribed by the project.

Many of the best Linux documents I have seen
have been email messages full of typos.

On the whole, worrying too much about the style of a document
is a bit like judging a presidential candidate on his sexual morality.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland