Re: thoughts on documentation reuse.

[Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net>]

>>>>> On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:46:53 +0100, Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de> said:

Juergen, I think you're missing the background of the discussion.  In
the WG meeting in Minneapolis (where we missed you!) we had some
discussions surrounding the fact the that people don't like following
references and that multi-level hierarchies would make this even
harder.  MIB writers like it.  MIB readers do not.  (see any OO
programming language for further reference).

Juergen> If I see a data type in a program and I need to know more
Juergen> about it, I have to go to the place where it is defined to
Juergen> see the details.  This is really not that hard to do.

The discussion in question centers around a notion that people aren't
doing that.

Juergen> And for those who find it too hard, there are already tools
Juergen> and Web pages that generate HTML versions for MIBs where you
Juergen> just have use the mouse.

And they aren't using those types of tools.  It centers around the
fact that people print out mibs, go sit in a corner with a cup of
coffee and beat their head against a wall.  At least I do.  Reading
long documents on the screen is still something that I don't do
because it's just a pain to read straight text for really long periods
of time on the screen.

-- 
Wes Hardaker
NAI Labs
Network Associates