Re: Even more changes to the comp.sys.apple2 FAQ

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <R.52178a$8uq@eddore.myrias.com>,
Devin Reade <gdr@eddore.myrias.com> wrote:
>In the future, please continue telling which sections have changed
>significantly.  This increases the likelyhood that someone will review
>them.  (I, for one, don't have the time to go over the entire FAQ
>each time.)

   Alright, stuff that's changed since roughly the start of the month:

Transferring files from other systems (Q#7-13)
Internet Access (21)
Partitioning Info, AW -> TXT (35-36)
DOS 3.3 on HD (38)
Appletalk/Ethernet info (39-40)
Modems on A2s (45)
GS Self Test error codes (69)
Sys 6 Minifaq (70-72)

   Note that all the numbers are somewhat arbitrary and can change if
and when I insert items, so going by short descriptions is best. (If
you look at the relative links in the file, you'll notice that they're
not number based anymore-- just changing all the numbers at once is
enough of a pain. I don't know of any emacs macros that let me do
numerical search & replace; might just hack up a awk/sed/perl progy to
do that for me.)

>BTW, have you automated a monthy (biweekly?) posting of the FAQ to
>csa2?

   Not really, yet. Basically, the FAQ keeps growing in size, so to
keep it under 40K/chunk (determined somewhat arbitrarily, but so that
chunks could be loaded with most versions of plain Appleworks 1.0-3.0
on a 128K box), I have to manually split it up each time it's posted.
Doing the split just before I do post it lets me post only the latest
version, and I don't have to do multiple splits in case I go back
and change something later. [There's also the fact that visi's cron
isn't quite working for me yet-- need to bug the sysadmins :]

   I think I'll stick with monthly posting for now. In the past week
or more, there've been very few questions straight out of the FAQ, so
it appears that newbies are either 1) not bothering to ask at all 2)
reading the FAQ first 3) None of the above. Given the number of people
that have asked FAQ questions literally a day or few after the
posting, it appears that a number of people would rather not look for
a FAQ before posting. [My brother reports that on the comp.lang.perl
newsgroup, the FAQ is posted twice a week and newbies still don't read
it.]

   [Insert standard Nathan rant about how newsreaders should make
everyone read the FAQ for a given group before they are allowed to
post. That'd save everyone so much aggravation.]


>> Q#34 Can I use High Density disks on my double density Apple II drives?

>I think that the FAQ should mention that some people have experienced
>problems with HD 3.5" disks, but that results may vary.

   I'll do that, along with my "If you care about your data, make
backups" public service announcement that's in the sections on HFS and
disk volumes in general. :)

>> Q#42 [...]

>Extraneous "or", period in wrong spot, and typo for "off".  There goes
>another nit.

   Doh, thanks. [Cleaned up a whole bunch of typos last night, but
musta missed that one.]

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein