Disk Drive Documents - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Jun 1999

please look at the comments below.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Max Eskin &lt;max82(a)surfree.com...

To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu...
  Date: Monday, June
07, 1999 7:26 PM
Subject: Re: Disk Drive Documents

...
 On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>I spent the better part of a year trying to get complete documents from
>Sunsite and other loci when I had the urge to learn about LINUX.  It seemed
...
  that EVERY
PARAGRAPH was a separate file  . . . what a PAIN.  There I sat,
50 computers, 35 TB of storage available half a dozen available DS3's for
internet traffic, and I had to type one character for every ten I
downloaded, or so it seemed.

There's got to be a better way.  Please tell me what it is. 
Well, you could get a Linux CD or book, which will have all of these for
you. However, I'm not sure which documents you're referring to. I've had
no related problems. There is also another issue, and that is that from
what I've found, the docs are useless 'learning about Linux'. They are
useful if you need command syntax, or if there is some specific thing that
you need to do and documentation exists for it. I found a book called
'UNIX Shell Programming' to be an invaluable resource. I do dislike Linux
books because they are usually either printed versions of the e-docs, or
very superficial. Check your library for a book on UNIX. 

I did that, and as you say, they're generally just reductions to CD of the
published e-docs, except that they're permanently mixed together out of
logical or chronological sequence, so you can't track progress of a given
feature set.  I wasn't after info on UNIX, I was after info on LINUX.
However that's not what THIS thread is about.

...
 This, however, has little to do with the disk drive
documentation. Nobody
will try to modify it, and since it will be tech manuals, I hardly think
that there will be a dilemma as to which file to download. Your all-in-one
approach does have merits, but as people have said, it's clumsy. A better
choice would be to either tar/zip the files together or simply put all
related files into one directory, so that when one needs to get a manual,
one just does 'get *' at the FTP prompt. 

I'm not sure clumsy is what it is, but it's inherently solvable if not
elegant.  If I can break out parts of the document into PCL, then I can do
that into POSTSCRIPT as well, and so can you.  If the guy down the hall
can't, he can ask for help.

...
 --Max Eskin (max82(a)surfree.com)
  http://scivault.hypermart.net: Ignorance is Impotence - Knowledge is Power
...