From: Douglas Livingstone <rampant@...>
Date: 2005-01-21T13:34:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:51:18 +0900, James Britt
<jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
> I have to say this is the first time I've ever heard anyway suggest that
> they could not tell that the docs at ruby-doc.org were the actual Ruby
> documentation.

I guess you're starting to get a new type of visitor then :)

When I first saw it, it felt like a dumping ground for odd bits of
documentation which didn't have a proper home... like it was some sort
of archive, and the real documentation was somewhere else yet to be
found.

It feels like it is designed to be as hard to read as possible. The
front page has mile long lines of text, random bits of news which
belong on ruby-lang, a Ruby Directory's worth of links stuffed into a
right hand column, bits of text lying around saying to join the
mailing list, each item on the menu seems to take you to a totally
different site, no way to search, no menu to browse, frames every
second page so you can't share links with other people... I don't
know. I can't look at it for more than about 5 minutes, does my head
in.

At least the Pragmatic Guide is easy to read (well, the version without frames).

A bit harsh, but honest.

> > Can't we apply the "fun to use"
> > principle to the documentation *and* the language itself?
> 
> Yes. Why do you ask?

Because ruby-doc.org is not fun to use ;)

Douglas