psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) (02/26/89)
<"Would you like me to summon Data so he could offer a few dozen synonyms?"> In article <8902182031.AA23662@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu>, tower@WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) writes: > It appears from the following, that there will be no or little quality > documentation in the future ftp distributions of OOPS (aka NIH Class > Library). And that a user only choice will be to buy a non-free book FTP access isn't "free"; it just passes the cost on to someone else. Some potential users (anyone downloading from Compu$erve or other expensive network) might save thirty dollars (a *pessimistic* estimate at the cost of the book) by buying a book instead of downloading the documentation. > This is a loss: > - there will be no quality on-line documentation for users. That's apparently the case now. > - there will be no freely-redistributable documentation for users > to share and improve. Granted. However, while lots of local hackers make genuine improvements to freely distributed *code*, in practice, darned few of them make any effort at all to improve the *documentation*. > - it will discourage people from using OOPS, because extra cost > and effort is needed to learn and use the library. Well, you can always RTFS (read the source). But taking the documentation off of the network and putting it (reasonably cheaply) onto the marketplace generally *increases* the number of people who can access it. Heck, that's the way most of us got started on C++ in the first place, right? > This particularly hits individual users and those who have lengthy > authorization proceedures with a purchashing bureaucracy in order to > buy a book. I realize that thirty dollars is a fair chunk of change to a grad student. It's not all that bad, though, and it's pretty painless for the rest of us. You seem to be saying here, "let my put my software acquisition expenses under the budget of running the lab and the network (which aren't micro-managed), rather than filing a purchase order." I can sympathize. > I hope Keith Gorlen and NIH will reconsider their decision on this > point. I don't. Bookstores are more accessible to me than FTP sites. And if I want to evaluate the software by reading the documentation first, it's easier for me to buy (or borrow) a book than to download (and print) the equivalent machine readable text. (Especially if that text needs to be formatted before it's printed. "Sure, it's in TeX format. Isn't that what everyone uses? And if you don't have it, you can just FTP that first.") This discussion is getting pretty far from C++; sorry. E-mail responses, please? Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories, att!pegasus!psrc psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind.
johnm@trsvax.UUCP (02/28/89)
The preceding note seemed to indicate that fairly extensive documentation on the OOPS package was available on Compu$erve (my only substitute for FTP :-). Could you please elaborate on its exact location? John Munsch