Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/08/29/06:11:40
On Sun, 24 Aug 1997, Mark Slagell wrote:
> That's beside the point. Depending on where you learn about DJGPP and
> where you download it from, it's possible to get it installed and to
> some extent working without ever being aware there _is_ a faq.
>
> I learned about the faq only after asking my first Stupid Question in
> this newsgroup. :-( Granted, I would have known if I'd read a few more
> other folks' posts before posting my own. But the experience obviously
> isn't uncommon.
Frankly, I fail to understand why. Anybody who joins a news group is
supposed to look for a FAQ for that news group. Every net tutorial
will tell you so. It is part of good netiquette. Usually, the FAQ is
posted to the group from time to time, so you should first look for a
posted FAQ. (In our case, the full FAQ is too large to be posted, but
there's a weekly mini-FAQ which says where the full version can be
found.)
If you don't find the FAQ, you should ask where it is (that is the
only FAQ that is allowed to be asked, although you should know by now
that this group tolerates much more than that).
> So I agree -- it would be greatly beneficial to newbies if the faq (I'd
> vote for a plain DOS text version) were bundled with some essential file
> you can't compile without.
There's nothing wrong with that suggestion (except that it will bloat
the zip size, and you will have complaints about files that don't fit
on a diskette). But I sincerely doubt that this will make the
problems go away, because you have actually to look for the FAQ to
know it's there. And if it is ``not uncommon'' that people don't read
the mini-FAQ when they join the group, why do you think they would
look for the FAQ on their machines?
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