Re: text editors with elinks or links?

["propaine" <propaine@verizon.net>]

Kirk's comments here prompt me to make a general set of observations.  I
suspect that I'm not alone in the perspective they express, but of course, I
may indeed be under a dunce cap.

I can't speak for the questioner here, but note that sometimes, sadly, it
does seem better to ask a question on a list like this and await an answer.
Man pages seem to vary a hell of a lot in quality.  I often find them terse
and cryptic, and sometimes barely even a starting point for knowing what to
do.  The sendmail man page on my system, for example, refers me to an
installation and user's guide for the kind of information I need about it,
but says nothing about where the guide is.

Yesterday, I looked at the man page for the Nano editor.  I was reading
about it in a book on Debian, and was curious to see whether my Fedora
system had it.  It does.  The manual gives some info, but, at least as far
as I could tell, doesn't even mention keystrokes for moving around in a
document--not even the page-up and page-down keys mentioned in the Debian
book.  I wondered if maybe you're supposed to know Pico already, since it's
intended to be largely compatible with that editor.  If so, it seems
an idiotic approach, one of those Linux things that seem intended to
perpetuate forever the primacy of Windows.

There is more decent documentation on Linux than there was a few years ago,
when I first tried to understand it.  (Some of it's even quite good!) I
appreciate that very much.  Still, I'm amazed at, say, my inability to get a
clear, precise answer to the question about whether replacing Fedora 2 with
Fedora 5 can be done as an upgrade or requires a full reinstall.  The Fedora
Web site doesn't seem to say.  The several books on Fedora that I have don't
seem to say.  My Linux networking teacher, who said he's been in the Unix
world since Carter was president, couldn't tell me.  From parts of things
I've read on this list and a thing or two I've heard elsewhere, I gather
that one can't leapfrog versions that way.  That's the kind of thing that
should be prominently noted in any documentation about installation or
upgrades, though.  (Incidentally, I'm not singling out Fedora:  I looked for
that sort of information about Debian, but so far haven't seen it.) If the
info's there and I've missed it, it's sure not for lack of willingness to
search and read!

In short, RTFM, as the saying goes, is a good idea, but sometimes it doesn't
work--at least for me.  RTFM should lead to UTFM, but often enough it does
not.  Also, there are times when the M stands for "MISSING INFORMATION."
Yes, I know that documenting in Linux is largely the work of volunteers, but
whatever that says about the generosity of the people, it doesn't make the
stuff more helpful.

If the problem is instead that I'm wearing an impenetrable dunce cap, I of
course welcome any information that will enable to discard this bit of
headgear.

Propaine
From: "Kirk Reiser" <kirk@braille.uwo.ca>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: text editors with elinks or links?


> I am sure you can get that information here eventually but wouldn't it
> be easier to just check your keymap in links?  You have to ask here
> and then wait for someone to bother to answer when the info is at your
> finger tips all the time in links or lynx or elinks or whatever
> application you happen to be using.  In fact, usually the man pages
> for a particular application will tell you the information much
> quicker than asking here as well.
>
> I don't remember about links the chain but it is F4 in elinks.
>
>   Kirk
>
> -- 
>
> Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
>
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