Mail Archives: cygwin/2002/09/30/20:17:30
*** Christopher Faylor (cgf AT redhat DOT com) wrote today:
:) [some comments deleted]
:)
:) However, this really side steps the issue. Five hundred "How do I get
:) to the previous command in bash?" questions are not going to lead to new
:) insight about cygwin. That's what we're talking about.
I guess I can reprhase that to as saying "that's what you and some other
people are talking about". That's not what I am talking about. Let people
ask questions, let's see what comes out of it. Maybe a bug report in a
package will come out, a minor improvement may come out too, who knows. I
understand that some questions are more appropriate in some mailing lists
than others, but nobody has a tally of how many innapropiate questions are
not being asked, nor how many appropriate questions are not being asked.
You can not guess what will happen in there, you can't predict it, and if
you will never be there, you will never know. It's basically a situation
in which you don't want to be involved, and that's fine, but why complain
about it, if it's not going to affect you in any way. I don't see the
point.
:) A question like (to use a recent example) "Why doesn't vim notice when
:) I resize a console window under cygwin?" will lead to cygwin insights.
:) I'd rather see those kind of questions asked in the official forum and
:) point the bash people to the appropriate documentation.
As I pointed out before, part of the problem is to learn to diagnose it.
You certainly know how to do that, and know which questions are
appropriate in each forum, not everyone knows that (as obvious as this may
seem to you), so give them a way to ask those questions, even if they ask
a question which is not "obviously" cygwin related.
Let me give you an example, I am seeing a problem in Pine (and this
happened to me!), in which I want to copy messages between systems (from a
folder in a local directory to a folder in a remote server, accessed
through IMAP). Every time I attempt to do this I get a message back saying
"closed connection (data)". Question. Do I ask the question of why this is
failing in the cygwin mailing list or not? It's not clear where the
problem is, there are lots of variables that could affect the answer to
this question. Here there are some possible answers to the question:
a) The message is not being saved in the right way, it's the user's fault.
read the help about configuring remote folders and try again.
b) the imap server is faulty, it's not Pine's fault.
c) it's a bug in Pine.
d) it's a bug in openSSL (distributed by cygwin) that happens because
openssl uses a microsoft library to compile its product and that
library had the bug.
e) It's a bug in cygwin.dll
It may be that the answer has to do with cygwin (e.g (e)), or it may be
(a), regardless of whatever it is, the question must be asked in order to
try to understand what the real answer is.
Because of the policy of questions in this list, I do not believe a
question like this will come out any time soon.
What I mean to say with all of this, is that you can't know what the forum
will be like, and I see more advantages than disadvantages to its
existence.
:) Basically, I don't see anything that's been discussed which will make
:) this newsgroup more useful than the mailing list.
I am not trying to sell refrigerators in the north pole, I am saying that
there are people that need answers. You never know which question will
come out of there. You are welcome to join the project, you are free to
stay out of there, but just because it's not a project that you believe
in, it doesn't mean it will be bad.
:) We've already shown that it won't be a very attractive place for
:) experienced people to hang out because, apparently, observations like
:) "You really should read the bash info page, specifically the section on
:) the command line" will be considered overly harsh. Instead, every
:) answer should be kind and caring towards the newbie status of the
:) questioners who should never be treated with anything other than
:) complete patience. And, every question should just be answered without
:) any thought to teaching people where to find things.
You've already shown that there are scenarios in this newsgroup in which
you do not want to participate, and that's fine. Everyone is welcome to
come and participate or simply not to join. I see no reason why you put
such a bad tag in a project that doesn't exist (yet). This sounds like you
are sending a message of not participating to others, not as a statement
of your beliefs, which you have already stated repeatedly over and over.
:) Again, I have to wonder who would want to hang out in such a forum. I
:) also have to wonder how it would be possible that this one place on the
:) internet could be carved out differently than every other place I've
:) seen.
See?
--
Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/
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