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Re: Documentation



I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. "Most" is ambiguous and unfair at best. The effectivity of every document, is relative to the readers background(that's a fair and unbiased statement)! When I saw the 'little math sequence', the pattern was nothing but obvious, that's also because my math background lends perfectly to that, obviously to someone who hasn't seen or studied math at all, that would be less than obvious(again relative to the 'readers' background, expectation was partial). I'm brand spanking new to OpenLDAP and within one week, after searching google and sifting through documentation out there - piece wise - I was able to get OpenLDAP(2.3 after recompiling the sources to add sql backend functionality) running on a FC4 server(running on port 81 non-default), using PostgreSQL(8.0.1) on a Solaris(on port 1025 again non-default) and both of these are plugged into another well known application, running on port 80(ewww, did anyone guess http? *bell* wrong... while yes port 80 is the 'standard' port for http protocol to be served on, I'm running an entirely different service there).

Relativity, ambiguity, conciseness, background experiences, any permutation of these(maybe one can add additional parameters to this equation) determines how effective the document is. Actually if we rotate the glass sphere, one could have the perspective that, a document that is wrong is also a GOOD lesson learned in what not to do, and will lend insight into the system operation, by raising the fast-track questions.

That's my $.02 USD.

:)


Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:



--On Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:30 PM -0400 Greg Martin <gmartin@gmartin.org> wrote:


On the other hand, having a howTo get you started on the road to
investigation can be a good thing. For me, the path to LDAP knowledge
was not best started with a walk through slapd.conf. A running server
with basic config can allow you to investigate LDAP at an appropriate
level. You may be "lost" when you get to your first tough question, but
you are lost in the middle of a highway with a bunch of signs telling you
where to head for answers. No HowTo is created in a vacuum. More
knowledge can be found at the end of the google path when you are ready.


Also, when you are trying to learn to fish, you are probably not ready to
understand the workings of the reel, how to make lead weights and to tie
a perfect knot.


My point is that there is more than one way to learn. Options are good.


But the majority of "How-To" documents I've found via google are just flat-out *wrong*. The only thing they teach people is incorrect ways to set things up, which leads to mass confusion, and complaints to the list about "poor documentation". And getting people to take down and/or fix their erroneous how-to's is nearly impossible.

--Quanah

--
Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Developer
ITS/Shared Application Services
Stanford University
GnuPG Public Key: http://www.stanford.edu/~quanah/pgp.html



-- Email: louis.gonzales@linuxlouis.net WebSite: http://www.linuxlouis.net "Open the pod bay doors HAL!" -2001: A Space Odyssey "Good morning starshine, the Earth says hello." -Willy Wonka