[Xorp-users] Xorp documentation

[Pierre Lepropre]

Ben,

> 
> It always seems easier (and more fun) to do things from scratch, but often taking
> the time to do incremental improvements produces more long-term
> gain.  (You can get a re-write 90% done, at large effort, and
> run out of time/interest, and the end result is still less
> useful than the original funky documentation.)
> 

I know: it's easier said than done. The only thing you have to be aware
of: except the most experienced people in XORP, nobody could be able to
do incremental changes in the current documentation as *every* piece of
feature has to be overlooked, the SNMP stuff you just told me is a great
example of that !

> I'm personally not so interested in poking content into a wiki that I'm
> not 100% certain can be freely copied (ie, what if your project leaders
> decide to suddenly restrict access, or just turn off the servers).
> I would like to add your slide-show to the xorp.ct tree and web site
> if/when you give permission.  And I'll be happy to link to your page
> when you are ready.

Ben, we are not a private company but a university. Every piece of work
we would be doing, in such hypothetical conditions, would be with and
for the whole community. Shutting down servers isn't exactly our policy
(actually, you'd be surprised of what still runs out there...).

But if you're afraid of that: why not creating a wiki at CandelaTech or
at some other place neutral where all your fears could be dismissed and
your hopes fulfilled ? I'd be more than happy to give you our whole
current content as a basis to start from.

> For the existing documentation, it's .tex files and found in
> xorp.ct/docs/*  I don't particularly know latex or ever tried to learn
> it, but it is not difficult to make changes to the existing text.
> You can build the postscript & pdf files with scons from the docs dir.

LaTeX isn't that hard but can be a little bit touchy at the beginning
(like XORP ;-) ). The thing is, I don't think it would be really
appropriate to directly modify these pieces of documentation.

In my mind, the LaTeX documentation should be updated with every major
release and in the meanwhile, all the suggestions should be brought to
something more likely to bring people in, as a wiki.

The slides you were referring to are not my own creation so I'm gonna
talk about it with my supervisor, and maybe I could get you the source
files. I don't think there's gonna be any problem with that.

Regards,

Pierre.