Re: [9front] PATCH: click-to-focus in fgui

[Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com>]

the biggest problem with our various attempts to create documentation is that nobody does (a complete job of) the work. the fqa started as a google code wiki with random contributions by random people, all of whom abandoned the effort. eventually i recovered some of those pieces, edited them into something coherent, and gradually expanded it all into a book. i didn’t ask for permission, but i did try to provide enough historical background and links to outside resources to help a newcomer like i used to be figure out how it all fits together. i didn’t always succeed. for example, fqa6 and fqa7 are especially weak. that’s because i don’t know what i’m talking about. but nobody else is picking up the baton, so i just keep churning out new editions of the same book. to make matters worse, 9front has has made enough changes (file system, auth, usb, wifi, etc.) that non-9front documentation is sometimes more confusing than helpful. everyone always complains about all of this but nobody ever fixes it. the last iteration of this dance rehearsal resulted in the creation of wiki.a-b.xyz (which i instantly mirrored at wiki.9front.org). at that time we (the 9front inner circle, aka the guys wearing those plague masks in EYES WIDE SHUT) discovered a couple of people had, unbeknownst to us, been adding things to the old wiki on code.9front.org (which had been setup during a previous dance rehearsal and ignored by the people who demanded it exist — you see, this is far from our first dance, that’s why we get to wear the funny hats). they were mad because nobody had acknowledged their efforts. okay, dr. bill hartford and his bewildered sense of entitlement. he wasn’t exactly the villain of the piece.

it sucks that people suck at arguing. the solution is to write the document that’s missing and make it available to the community. don’t be confused by the 9front brand; it’s just a rip-off of the old saul bass bell system logo that i use to extract money and prestige from the plan 9 community. if you see something that can be improved, by all means, DO SO, and share it so that others may benefit from your hard work.

rest assured, you will be denigrated and ridiculed for your efforts.*

sl

* seemingly arbitrary contrarianism serves the purpose of sharpening our thinking. don’t get mad, just make more sense.





> On Aug 15, 2021, at 6:05 PM, Eckard Brauer <eckard.brauer@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> 
>> to be fair, it also makes the same people angry.
> 
> To maybe end that unlucky story, if "it" in your sentence references to
> the last paragraph, it made me angry in a sense of "why the fuck didn't
> I know of that?", simply frustration of having no idea what good and
> probably well accepted reasons lead to such consensus. Even if i didn't
> agree with hiro at a given point, I (mostly) enjoy reading his
> statements (and those of many or all the ppl. here).
> 
> Sure I know well of the documentation dilemma(s) from experience in a
> few companies i worked for. And continuously trying to learn enough of
> P9 to better understand and getting to some productivity at all, treat
> it as a stupid over-reaction... a friend told me at a time that
> "occasionally your (my) blasting fuse is short".
> 
> That's been more than enough on the topic from me.
> 
> Eckard
>