Documentation blues

Robin Lynn Frank rlfrank@paradigm-omega.com
Wed Jun 25 00:38:03 2003


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On Tuesday 24 June 2003 01:51 pm, David Shaw wrote:

> What is "order of need"?  My order of need is bound to be different
> than someone elses.  Anyway, see the README file that comes with GnuPG
> and/or http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html.  That seems to be what
> you are looking for.  They don't get into the more esoteric commands
> though.
>
Actually,  cipher-algo,  digest-algo and  cert-digest-algo  don't appear =
in=20
those documents (unless I've gone blind).  Since they can be used in=20
gpg.conf, that would be the logical place to look.  And I am still lookin=
g to=20
find out if I can make these preferences global, perchance in /etc/gpg.co=
nf=20
of something similar.

> > Now in response to David Shaw's comment about my post about tedious
> > documentation, If I knew enough about gpg to contribute to the
> > documentation, I would not have needed to ask my question in the
> > first place.
>
> I don't agree with this way of thinking.  If you know enough to ask a
> question, I think you are extremely close to understanding the answer.
> The person who truly doesn't understand often doesn't even understand
> how to ask the question.
>
> If you ask a question, and get an answer that you understand, why not
> write a paragraph on that specific detail for the manual?  If you had
> to ask the question in the first place, clearly the manual didn't give
> you the answer.  Once the question is answered, though, you know the
> answer and could write a few lines on the subject for the next person.
>
> I'm usually happy to answer questions, but utterly delighted to answer
> them when the answer is going to be put into the documentation.  Good
> documentation helps everyone.

Maybe what is needed is a good configuration tool.  There a a bunch of=20
frontends but I haven't seen one that will write gpg.conf (Maybe there is=
=20
one, but I must have missed it.

- --=20
Robin Lynn Frank
Director of Operations
Paradigm-Omega, LLC
    ******
The need to do something is
inversely proportional to the
time available.


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