*BSD News Article 45487


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From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Documentation project (was Re: Slight flame from Linux user)
Date: 15 Jun 1995 23:48:16 +0100
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
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Message-ID: <3rqdbg$q1u@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie>
References: <3ql3gd$je2@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <3rhekp$400@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> <3ri7d5$133@park.uvsc.edu> <3rl9gf$ps7@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <DA50ux.Krv@midway.uchicago.edu> <3rnmjc$fde@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <3roj57$l5s@pandora.sdsu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamilton.maths.tcd.ie

larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu (Larry Riedel) writes:

>I may be wrong about the intent, but I took it to suggest that it
>is weird that someone would think that having pieces of software
>written by different programmers could lead to a good operating
>system, but having sections of documentation written by different
>authors could not lead to a good manual.  Is that reasonable?

I don't know whether it is reasonable, but I am sure it is true.
A manual in which each chapter (even each section)
is written by a different author
is most unlikely to be readable.

By contrast, it doesn't make much difference
if "cat" is written by the same person as the OS, or not.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland