On Fri, 15 Mar 1996, Soren Dayton wrote:
I think that this is true. But O'Rielly has begun to write books that
really are not necessary (I will take things like the sendmail book was
necessary. But are things like the bash book really needed? the Linux
stuff with the fabulous linux documentation project (and I say this as a
heathen FreeBSD user!)?
Maybe they aren't necessary for you but there are lots of people who are
very happy to have a book like "Learning the vi editor" sitting next to
their computer. When I set someone up with procmail, I usually print out
a copy of my Filtering Mail FAQ and follow the steps. I feel slowed down
and frustrated when I need to derive the procedure from the man pages.
However, a book that goes into detail about all things at the MUA
level might be interesting. By "MUA level" I mean not sendmail (MTA,
and there is already a book on that) and not MIME/PGP/PEM which
concern themselves with the contents of a message.
Well, I have no idea what you mean. What do you mean by the MUA
level? I think that you mean MDA. (And I do not think that this is
really a satisfactory distinction because things like POP/IMAP and
procmail do not really fit in nicely) (unless you want to call them an
extension of the delivery agents).
That said, I think that the idea of something addressing that weird
ground would be very good. AS there are more users on machines the use
of IMAP and POP is increasing (because NFS just cannot cut it. And it
really should not have to try) I imagine that the more clueless people
running things like ISP's are really going to get screwed. But... (and
no offense to Nancy intended) is Nancy the person to do that?
No offense taken. I agree that a book about mail protocols, etc. aimed at
sys admins could be a very useful book, but I'm probably *not* the right
person to write it. I think that I'm best suited to write a book whose
target audience includes regular users.
I think
that procmail just isn't big enough to be a book. what things do people
have trouble with? the syntax. regex. shell scripting issues.. what
else? Logic..
People have trouble with all kinds of things about procmail. I regularly
have sys admins and programmers (people who know how to RTFM) sending me
mail asking me questions about procmail. It is not an easy tool to use
and I think that most people will agree with that.
So how about a lot of really good examples that show a lot of things in
the distributions rather than a book (that is going to be too expensive :)
How about encouraging people to read the manpages! They are excellent as
far as manpages go. I think that a faq is about right (and it would
be done if my work was not more than full time right now).
I am also not convinced that a procmail book is needed and that's why I'm
having this email conversation. It really depends on how big of an
audience there would be for the book. And I don't know the answer to
that.
Thanks,
Nancy