[LARTC] Beginner's Stumbling Blocks

[Whit whit@transpect.com]

<PRE>Others have commented on the usefulness of adding an explicit list of what
should be included in the kernel. I second that.

There's another thing that's tripped me up: While iproute2 compiles and
installs easily (on a Red Hat 6.1 box), the documentation is in a format
that - while not obscure to old Unix hands - requires compilation, which
requires:

&quot;To make documentation, cd to doc/ directory and make there. It assumes,
that latex, dvips and psnup are in your path.&quot;

Which barfs because I don't have dvips. Nor is a source for dvips listed on
freshmeat.net, nor is there any dvips*.rpm in Red Hat's own or contributed
directories, or a dvips*.tar at sunsite ... so it must be a part of some set
of utilities? It's wonderful that Alexey's written these core tools, but if
documentation isn't to be obscure it should be provided in universally
readible ASCII or HTML or manpage formats.

I do see the link to an HTML version from 10/23/99 in the HOWTO's &quot;Further
reading&quot; section - but are the docs the same a year later?

Maybe the HOWTO should include full quotations of Alexey's documents so
those of us who don't really care about learning to backdate our systems to
include a full suite of obscure Unix typesetting utilities can read the
stuff ... and not send stupid questions to this list that those docs answer.
I have full respect for those who can typeset beautiful documents on Unix
using the legacy tools - it's just a set of skills many have no use for, and
it's strange to find lack of them a barrier to learning the latest routing
capabilities.

(Personally, I won't program using a visual tool, and won't typeset using a
nonvisual one - to each h(er||is) own.)

 \/\/ I-I I T 
 Blauvelt
 <A HREF="mailto:whit@transpect.com">whit@transpect.com</A>


</PRE>