Re: SEUL: Hello anyone here

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <361CB890.9A62F751@po-box.mcgill.ca>, pstong1@po-box.mcgill.ca writes:
>I've been a bit remiss too: The page hasn't been updated in over a week
>now. I'm going home for the weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving) and will be
>working on page updates there.
>     A couple of things of note. I've been talking up SEUL with some
>unixphiles in Ottawa and Peterborough lately, and they have since
>visited the web site. One of them is quite interested in sdoc, as it
>would be quite useful to him professionally (for user surveys at a
>university), so I'm going to try to convince him that he (or more
>appropriately, a student that he'll hire) wants to get sdoc working.

I think the idea behind sdoc is very cool. The more I read about
xml, the more I ask myself why nobody has already written this. And
I think some people have already written similar things. But nothing
quite so simple and extensible.

It should be noted that sdoc really ought to be apache-embedded before
it is truly of use to people. That way you could parse things on the
fly, such as mysql lookups. Without that, it's still pretty lame.
And to get that, we need major speed improvements.

Which is probably why a good sdoc doesn't exist elsewhere yet. It's
really tough to do right.

>cuplan@grove.ufl.edu wrote:
>> Interesting sidenote things- I think on an internet search I may
>> have found "Linux for Beginners" documents regarding installation
>> of Linux and what to do when you've finished...basics of system
>> maintainence, etc.
>     Wow! Where was this when I needed it a couple of months ago?!!? :)
>Seriously though, if there is some way of either making a list of good
>beginner references available on the distribs themselves (better) or
>writing the thing itself (not as good) and including it with the
>distribs, then I think we'll be fulfilling our mandate.

Would you like to volunteer to coordinate things? Or even better,
just start adding things to the links.sdoc file in the repository.
Try not to make it too cluttered (so if you add a whole lot, create
a new category for them or something).

>> I think they'll get linked into the FAQ somewhere on "Where can
>> newbies learn more" or something like that.
>     Perhaps one of the questions we can ask ourselves as informed Linux
>users is how can we make it easier for the user to progress from the "I
>just installed Linux. Now what?" stage to the point where they can be
>productive. This could take several forms, from making a list of
>newsgroups and mailing lists where users can get help to a list of
>docunentation and other resources on the web. The goal of the exercise
>should be to make the user as independant as possible as early as
>possible; those who need help should be able to get it, but should also
>be able to try to resolve problems in their own, because it is in their
>own best interest to be informed.

The best place to look for info has canonically been in the howto's.
However, the howto's are not designed to be aesthetically pleasing
to "normal end-user people", and so they're not very psyched about
skimming through a big file looking for their answer.

Just as a random thought, something automated (on the net) would be
a useful resource. Perhaps an expert system.

Another problem is that the howto's are not designed to be printed
out. The usered project (usered.freeservers.com) hoped to fix
that, but I think it's stalling now due to lack of interest.

>     Cheers,
>
>     Pete

--Roger