serverguide methodology

[Brian Shumate]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi All,

Perhaps this issue is highlighting a more fundamental problem with  
documentation, and could be best resolved using a combination of  
ideas, and input thus far received?

I am referring to document scope, and audience.  When a document has  
a declared scope, and audience defined as a preamble to the content,  
then such issues as this editor preference matter should not be  
possible.

For example, with the Server Guide itself, the Audience for the  
document should include persons who've already determined what their  
preferred editor is.  A user who is visiting the Server Guide simply  
to get OpenSSH up and running for example, really has no business  
reading the guide and attempting to do so if they have not yet become  
comfortable with a text editor first!  Wouldn't everyone agree to  
this?  The Server Guide should therefore state that it is targeted to  
persons with specific comprehension, and skills, among which, should  
be the use of a preferred text editor.

So with that in mind, the Scope of the document should not include  
"how to edit a GNU/Linux configuration file" at all, because the  
document's audience should not be users unfamiliar with editing GNU/ 
Linux configuration files, IMHO.

I am certainly of the "Editor Agnostic" school of thought here  
though, and would rather be writing only "edit the file: /etc/motd"  
for example than presenting the command each time too.  (I had only  
done so in my sections via following previous examples)

However, if Ubuntu Linux does not have an ...officially-endorsed...  
text editor that is the preferred one to use, then no particular  
editor should be recommended over another in order to at least remain  
impartial to so-called "editor wars" and allow users  
the ...freedom... to select their own preferred editor.

HTH, and Happy Weekend to you all!  ;-)


Kind Regards,

Brian Shumate
GPG: 0x441E06C0


On Dec 17, 2005, at 7:34 PM, Jerome Gotangco wrote:

> I thought this was already resolved in previous meetings? Nano has
> always been in the distro and vim isn't.
>
> Jerome Gotangco
> jgotangco at ubuntu.com | jgotangco at gmail.com
> Mobile: +639196555242
> GPG: 0xA97B69A0
>
> --
> ubuntu-doc mailing list
> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFDpL4043QdCUQeBsARAoDLAJ4zQa6jmfrOljOAe2sxeImF2JGogwCeIzGz
eLQjrATtkJ7BqvEt2s2JkgQ=
=HZSx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----