On Thu, 2007-05-31 at 20:04 -0700, Ted Kosan wrote:
> I think that the current documentation that Nightmorph has put together is well
> suited to more experienced users.  For example, I like the different paths that
> the documentation present at various points because it allows me to see
> alternatives that I often did not know existed.
> 
> Instead of replacing the handbook, or radically altering it, my intent with the
> newbie materials is to have a newbie use them to successfully install Gentoo
> and then they should blow their installation away and do a reinstall from
> scratch using the normal Handbook.

See, here's the funny thing about the Handbook.  We can never please
everybody.  The Handbook used to be a single document.  There were many
problems with new users being confused by all of the choices presented
to them in the Handbook, so the arch-specific items were moved into
arch-specific files and the networkless Handbook was split from the
networked Handbook.  Now people are talking about merging them again,
which seems like a serious step backwards.

Why not just rename the "2007.0 Handbook" into the "2007.0 Networkless
Installation Guide" or something similar?  After all, the versioned
Handbooks are only good for the release they correspond to and it won't
mean going back to having a single and confusing Handbook.  All that is
really needed is a link to the networkless guide for people to follow if
they're planning on a networkless install, assuming it isn't there
already.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation