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FW: "shouted down", "shot down", apologies



comments to multiple interwoven posts on this thread are interspersed.
Having now finished reading all of the posts, some is redundant but, since 
I already wrote it, I'll let you decide whether to read it.

> Christopher Faylor wrote:
> > I guess this wasn't obvious from my response.  I promised to try
> > to be more polite.  I didn't promise that I would not be terse.
> 
> Brian Keener wrote:
> You are correct - I had not thought of your original response 
> in that light.  But you are right - we really do not know if he 
> read or even knew of the FAQ.  That goes towards what I said - 
> part of my understanding of the whole process comes from 
> asking very pointed questions and not being to generic (which 
> I do have a tendency to do as you can tell).
	...
> but for a real neophyte (and that is really the key) they end 
> up aksing themselves 
> where do I go from here.  That was probably my biggest 
> problem - I like to think 
> you won't find many people who will download cygwin, decide 
> they like it and can 
> use it to teach themselves C++, and want to contribute - and 
> try to do it all at 
> the same time from the beginning.  That was my problem.
	...
> I know and I thank you and all the others - but admit it - it 
> is sometimes with 
> mumbling under your breath because to you "oldies" it is so 
> second nature and you 
> might wait for us to ask a second time before answering.  

Very much like the "I have read the FAQ and http://cygwin.com/docs.html"; but
I still have a question about XYZ. It is very useful for people on the list
to know that you have never written a line of C++ code nor contributed a
patch to an open source project but that you do have 10 years of experience
with C and have built a few packages from source. ... This lets everybody
know your perspective. 

If you are very new it is difficult to know what is and is not appropriate.
By the same token the 'old hats' (no pun intended) may have their own
assumptions about the amount of knowledge a person has but, more than
likely, they are trying to glean it from the message you post. 

What one can expect is that each of the 'old hats' can probably answer 90%
of the questions off of the top of their head if the correct question is
asked in the context of sufficient background information. Also, they get
these questions frequently enough (Though, they may not be frequent enough
to merit a FAQ.) that they are likely to give terse answers -- sometimes
they need proding and other times they are proding you to do some looking
(and learning) on your own. 

What is my point here? I think Jon Postel put it well: "Be liberal in what
you accept, and conservative in what you send."
(http://www.postel.org/jonpostel.html)
It applies well for protocols and human conversations. Stripped of our
intonations, vocal volume, facial expressions and body language; written
(including electronic) forces us to communicate clearer, and assume the
better of other's statements. 


> > Christopher Faylor wrote:
> > I guess the problem that I have with all of this is you almost never see
> > anyone in the gcc, or gdb projects professing that cvs checkout and
building
> > to be a major obstacle.  I don't know what is so different about cygwin.

I really hope that somebody that is in the gcc or gdb projects is quite
experienced with cvs! They probably do have your same view of what is and is
not obvious.


Brian Keener wrote:
> That is usually the case with me - if someone will have all 
> the problems it will be 
> me.  But it may also be the number of people that are 
> actually using this on Win95 
> as opposed to NT.  This also goes back to my nature - I want 
> it all - if there are 
> 5 options on something I want all 5.  I wasn't happy just 
> learning C++ or working 
> with cygwin - I wanted to learn C++, work with cygwin and 
> contribute to setup too.

If you want it all, why haven't you upgraded? ;-)
(BTW: Notice the smiley -- it helps others understand that I am poking fun
at as opposed to attacking.)

> Christopher Faylor wrote:
> > ...
> > The new cygwin dll is named new-cygwin1.dll because you don't want
> > to create a cygwin1.dll while you're using the cygwin1.dll.
> 
Brian Keener wrote:
> Thank you.
	...
> ...that goes along as 
> well with the discussion we had here a while back about you 
> making your presence 
> less known (which by the way - does not appear to be in your 
> nature ;-)) Sometimes 
> you have to force us to look elsewhere for the answers and/or 
> to dig deeper by not 
> responding and for the most part we all understand that as well.

A comment for this pkg. maintainer: Personally, I have found names of the
form cygwin-new.dll to be preferable because they then are right next to the
original filename in an ls listing. 

A comment for people new to this: 'ls -lrt' will list all files sorted by
time (-t)putting the most recent at the end (-r) so they are right next to
the prompt. This makes them easy to find even if they have unexpected names.
Putting the new files at the end means that you don't have to scroll back or
use a pager to find them if there is a large number of files in the
directory.

> > If you think that the documentation is inadequate, then improve it.

I second that. Personally, I have considered this but I don't recall any
obvious mention of where it is located. Though, I also haven't had any time
to spend looking into it, my first step would have been some cvs hunting...
(Oh, the wonders one finds there!) Since that time though, the topic has
come up on the list (at least once).


> So, that's fine.  I will try to curb my response to email here and let
> the community develop its own mechanisms for answering questions.
> 
> cgf

Hmmm.... Somehow, I have trouble beliving this...


A few years ago (2, 4, 10? -- b19-b20 I think) I looked into using Cygwin on
my desktop and it was nothing like what is today. I was able to run it but I
couldn't get the terminal emulation to work with the pager, troff, etc. to
view man pages... It didn't stay on my machine too long. It is 10 times
better today and I think that is in a large part to CFG (despite his
excellent ability to write inflammatory email :-)). As I have mentioned
previously, I currently use the same shell startup files for my Linux and
Windows 2K machines. I cannot image that even being possible with b20. (They
also work for different shells, sh, ksh, tcsh, bash - so maybe I am not
saying as much as I think. But, that is another thread.) 

So, I also would like to end with a big thank you to everybody that has
contributed to saving me from Windows madness(es). 

________________________________
Glen Coakley, Sr. Software Engineer
MQSoftware Inc., (763) 543-4845
"Tinkero ergo sum." -- Chuck Murcko

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