7 ms·

I'm baffled. Is there some broader context that makes this make sense? From what I can tell, this fellow (the one sending the email) is being paid money to deve

by srl 4y ago

I'm baffled. Is there some broader context that makes this make sense? From what I can tell, this fellow (the one sending the email) is being paid money to develop priorities for updating the FreeBSD handbook. His response is to send an email to the /announcement/ mailing list, with a list of all the relevant bug reports he could find, asking others to do his job for him? A reasonable survey to send around might be "how often do you use the FreeBSD docs?" "How often do you notice errors in section 1? Section 2? Section 3?" That's not what this is. It's "here's a specific error, and I'm gonna run a /poll/ to figure out what the priority on fixing it is". Even ignoring the "that's why we hired /you/" component---this must be a singularly ineffective way to gain reliable information. Very few people are going to reply (because each of the ~100 questions is rather technical!). The responses are therefore going to be self-selected to... I don't know, whoever has the time and will to waste on this.

hereforphone 4y ago
Interesting use of slashes
- thijsvandien 4y ago
  This is a common way of expressing italics in plain text. Not that it's needed on HN, because here one can use asterisks and get actual italics.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
blackhaz 4y ago
What is also baffling is the new state of the FreeBSD Handbook. I am a newcomer, so my voice probably doesn't matter much - I've been running FreeBSD since 9 as my primary desktop. The Handbook was a neat collection of formatted HTML pages. The contents section was where you'd expect it - at the top. Typography, code colors, vertical and horizontal indents were all well-thought - it was easy to find the stuff you need fast. The person(s) who made it were concentrated on delivering information. The new Handbook is really bad. The contents in split HTMLs is on the left, but then there is another contents section on the right. There contents in single HTML is on the right (why?) Typography is a weak mix of serif and sans-serif and italics in illogical places. Interline spacing is bad - the feeling is that instead of a reference book we are now looking at a poorly designed advertisemsent brochure, but still structured as a book. Chapters, sections and subsections are poorly demarcated - you can't tell when things end and new things begin. Horizontal and vertical indents separating coherent blocks of text are all broken - you simply can't easily find the information you need. Maybe I'm an old fart, and I like Beastie more than this soul-less flat demon, but I think the new person in charge of the Handbook is concentrated on "design" more than on the content. Sorry for the off-topic, fellas. Just needed to get it out.
- carlavilla 4y ago
  Hi, Thanks for your feedback. I’m the responsible of the new design. Can you please contact with me? I’m looking to improve the design. carlavilla@FreeBSD.org This night I’ll update the post with a brief explanation.
  - carlavilla 4y ago
    Sorry for the delay, I'm gonna answer my previous post :) First of all, thanks for your feedback. I'm gonna try to answer all of your questions. I also got some emails about this and I'll ping you requesting your opinion about some changes I planned to improve the usability. Again, thanks for your feedback and to get in touch with me. First of all, I didn't notice this complaint in Discord. I'm in the FreeBSD forums, the FreeBSD mailing list, IRC, and some telegram channels, but I wasn't in Discord. Right now I am in Discord. The truth is that there's plenty of ways to communicate with us (the developers) and we cannot stay in touch in every place, sorry. But I was informed about the usability problems in the FreeBSD Forums. Right now I'm working in a way to hide the book menu and the table of contents menu. If it's taken me so long to get to work on these problems it's because I do this in my spare time. Sometimes I have more free time and sometimes not. This last month I haven't had any free time because we're developing a new tool at my work and this takes a lot of time. I'm the main architect and you know... (of course using only FreeBSD ;) Secondly, nobody paid me for the new design and nobody paid me to migrate the documentation to Hugo/AsciiDoctor. I've made it because I'm a FreeBSD user and I thought this is some kind of "contribute to something that I'm using in my personal laptop and at my job for free". So basically, I made this for free. And I'm really proud to belong to the FreeBSD Community and to dedicate my free time to this operating system. Apart from that, we're also working on a new design for the main page and also a new page for the manual pages and for the ports. And right now the regarding questions about the new design. * The left side of the page: What you can see on the left side are all the chapters of the book. In the old design, if you're for example in the second chapter and you want to go to the ninth chapter you have two options. First, go to the index (one navigation in the browser) and find the ninth chapter in the index and click to this chapter (another navigation in the browser). Right now you have all the chapters on the left side. I think this is an improvement. I am working on a search tool to search in the chapter titles and filter them. * The right side of the page: What you can see on the right side of the page it's the Table of Contents of the chapter. In the old design, if you are in the middle of the page and you want to navigate to another section of this same page, you have two options. First, go to the top of the page to locate the Table of Contents and click on the desired chapted. Second, use the scroll to navigate to the desired section. Right now you have all the chapters always on your screen. (As I said, I am working on a way to hide this ToC). Apart from that, on the right side you can see an easy way to download the book or the article in PDF (we're working in the epub format). You don't need to navigate to the FreeBSD FTP, etc. You have the PDF in one click and in an easy way to get it. And if you want to edit the page because you found an error. You can press the link and modify the page. In this way we want to encourage people to contribute to FreeBSD. > Typography is a weak mix of serif and sans-serif and italics in illogical places. About the font. All the portal is using the Inter font and mono font for the command examples. In the old design it's true that we're not using Inter but we're using the same font for the commands examples. Can you please share a place in which you think italic should not be used? Maybe it was a mistake in the conversion to AsciiDoc. I know that changes are hard. In the end we're humans and we like what we are accustomed to. If some of you have been using FreeBSD since version 9 and reading the manual for 7 or 8 years it is normal that this change is difficult. And about the topic of this thread :) I'm really happy to see this kind of initiative. It is very good that someone lifts the rug and brings out all the improvements that can be done in documentation. And it's a really good initiative. If some of you want to collaborate with the documentation. Please, don't hesitate to contact me by email. Bye and thanks again for your feedback. I'll answer the emails ASAP.

by srl 4y ago

hereforphone 4y ago

Interesting use of slashes

thijsvandien 4y ago
This is a common way of expressing italics in plain text. Not that it's needed on HN, because here one can use asterisks and get actual italics.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

blackhaz 4y ago

What is also baffling is the new state of the FreeBSD Handbook. I am a newcomer, so my voice probably doesn't matter much - I've been running FreeBSD since 9 as my primary desktop. The Handbook was a neat collection of formatted HTML pages. The contents section was where you'd expect it - at the top. Typography, code colors, vertical and horizontal indents were all well-thought - it was easy to find the stuff you need fast. The person(s) who made it were concentrated on delivering information. The new Handbook is really bad. The contents in split HTMLs is on the left, but then there is another contents section on the right. There contents in single HTML is on the right (why?) Typography is a weak mix of serif and sans-serif and italics in illogical places. Interline spacing is bad - the feeling is that instead of a reference book we are now looking at a poorly designed advertisemsent brochure, but still structured as a book. Chapters, sections and subsections are poorly demarcated - you can't tell when things end and new things begin. Horizontal and vertical indents separating coherent blocks of text are all broken - you simply can't easily find the information you need. Maybe I'm an old fart, and I like Beastie more than this soul-less flat demon, but I think the new person in charge of the Handbook is concentrated on "design" more than on the content. Sorry for the off-topic, fellas. Just needed to get it out.

carlavilla 4y ago
Hi, Thanks for your feedback. I’m the responsible of the new design. Can you please contact with me? I’m looking to improve the design. carlavilla@FreeBSD.org This night I’ll update the post with a brief explanation.
- carlavilla 4y ago
  Sorry for the delay, I'm gonna answer my previous post :) First of all, thanks for your feedback. I'm gonna try to answer all of your questions. I also got some emails about this and I'll ping you requesting your opinion about some changes I planned to improve the usability. Again, thanks for your feedback and to get in touch with me. First of all, I didn't notice this complaint in Discord. I'm in the FreeBSD forums, the FreeBSD mailing list, IRC, and some telegram channels, but I wasn't in Discord. Right now I am in Discord. The truth is that there's plenty of ways to communicate with us (the developers) and we cannot stay in touch in every place, sorry. But I was informed about the usability problems in the FreeBSD Forums. Right now I'm working in a way to hide the book menu and the table of contents menu. If it's taken me so long to get to work on these problems it's because I do this in my spare time. Sometimes I have more free time and sometimes not. This last month I haven't had any free time because we're developing a new tool at my work and this takes a lot of time. I'm the main architect and you know... (of course using only FreeBSD ;) Secondly, nobody paid me for the new design and nobody paid me to migrate the documentation to Hugo/AsciiDoctor. I've made it because I'm a FreeBSD user and I thought this is some kind of "contribute to something that I'm using in my personal laptop and at my job for free". So basically, I made this for free. And I'm really proud to belong to the FreeBSD Community and to dedicate my free time to this operating system. Apart from that, we're also working on a new design for the main page and also a new page for the manual pages and for the ports. And right now the regarding questions about the new design. * The left side of the page: What you can see on the left side are all the chapters of the book. In the old design, if you're for example in the second chapter and you want to go to the ninth chapter you have two options. First, go to the index (one navigation in the browser) and find the ninth chapter in the index and click to this chapter (another navigation in the browser). Right now you have all the chapters on the left side. I think this is an improvement. I am working on a search tool to search in the chapter titles and filter them. * The right side of the page: What you can see on the right side of the page it's the Table of Contents of the chapter. In the old design, if you are in the middle of the page and you want to navigate to another section of this same page, you have two options. First, go to the top of the page to locate the Table of Contents and click on the desired chapted. Second, use the scroll to navigate to the desired section. Right now you have all the chapters always on your screen. (As I said, I am working on a way to hide this ToC). Apart from that, on the right side you can see an easy way to download the book or the article in PDF (we're working in the epub format). You don't need to navigate to the FreeBSD FTP, etc. You have the PDF in one click and in an easy way to get it. And if you want to edit the page because you found an error. You can press the link and modify the page. In this way we want to encourage people to contribute to FreeBSD. > Typography is a weak mix of serif and sans-serif and italics in illogical places. About the font. All the portal is using the Inter font and mono font for the command examples. In the old design it's true that we're not using Inter but we're using the same font for the commands examples. Can you please share a place in which you think italic should not be used? Maybe it was a mistake in the conversion to AsciiDoc. I know that changes are hard. In the end we're humans and we like what we are accustomed to. If some of you have been using FreeBSD since version 9 and reading the manual for 7 or 8 years it is normal that this change is difficult. And about the topic of this thread :) I'm really happy to see this kind of initiative. It is very good that someone lifts the rug and brings out all the improvements that can be done in documentation. And it's a really good initiative. If some of you want to collaborate with the documentation. Please, don't hesitate to contact me by email. Bye and thanks again for your feedback. I'll answer the emails ASAP.