[ntp:questions] Re: Latest changes to TWikiGettingStarted

David L. Mills mills at udel.edu
Mon Oct 6 18:55:11 UTC 2003


Brad,

I promised to leave you the last word. I lied. Geeze. I get tired of
being a dartboard and having to repeat my position so many times with so
little effect.

1. I said in a previous message to Harlan that I have no objection
whatsoever to include compile/build/install text files in the
distribution. The distribvution already includes README files for this
purpose, although they probably need some tuneup. However, tuned up
information is already in the quick.html and build.html HTML pages and
can be easily converted to replace or augment the README files.

2. Otherwise, my position is that only HTML reference pages be included
in the distribution both to reduce bulk and to avoid translation
misinterpretation. My concern is mainly about the program and protocol
documentation.

3. The html2man.pl script in the distribution converts HTML pages to man
format. This capability should be mentioned in a prominent place in the
distribution and on the web. Excuse emphasis in the following: WHY NOT
INCLUDE A TRANSLATION CAPABILITY ON THE WEB? Wouldn't it be clever to
pipe documentation for the current or an historic version via bitkeeper
to html2man.pl on the fly? And, while I have discouraged it in the
interest of archive bloat, I have no objection if the bitkeepers
maintain a document archive trail paralleling the sources archive trail.

4. If Apple doesn't include NTP documentation in the product, don't
blame my policies for that. If they don't like HTML, they can rip off
man pages real quick or better yet, link to www.ntp.org. I do assume
they have a for-further-information link list somewhere.

5. The NTP documentation on the web is from the latest development
version, as the web copy is automatically updated from the master pages
each night. Please note with emphasis that these pages are updated
frequently as the result of new features, corrections and general
cleanup. Therefore, the documentation included in each version applies
only to that version. Historic documentation for all prior versions is
available via the repository. I assume everybody knows of this and how
to use bitkeeper.

6. You say "This is a totally unacceptable state of affairs." I find
this misleading, unhelpful and inflammatory and would never include
anything like that in the Millsspeak lexicon.

Dave

Brad Knowles wrote:
> 
> At 7:14 AM +0000 2003/10/06, Hal Murray wrote:
> 
> >  I think we should be praising Apple for making it easy to get NTP
> >  going on their boxes, AND for providing ntp servers for their
> >  customers rather than adding to the load on the main public servers.
> 
>         The version of NTP that Apple provides is ancient.  I have done
> work to get 4.1.80 to build and install on MacOS X, and contributed
> that back to the project.  I don't see anyone from Apple doing
> anything similar -- if they have any patches, they keep them to
> themselves.  They also don't ship any NTP-related documentation at
> all with the OS.
> 
>         Since we haven't been able to provide man pages in the past, this
> means that every MacOS X system ever shipped has a number of
> ntp-related commands that have absolutely no documentation
> whatsoever.  Worse, because Dave is very insistent upon having only
> the very latest version of the documentation available on the web, we
> haven't been able to provide information on our website that would be
> useful to anyone using the provided version of NTP on MacOS X.
> 
>         This is a totally unacceptable state of affairs.
> 
...



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