Re: Hello

["Yury V. Zaytsev" <yury shurup com>]

Hi David,

On Mon, 2015-05-18 at 08:15 -0400, David Both wrote:
> The Wiki says that there is a project to collect information and
> complete the web documentation.

At some point, the idea was to use the (back then newly created) wiki as
the documentation project to collect everything that shouldn't go into
the manpages.

Unfortunately, things haven't gone as planned for a number of reasons:

1) There was not enough people with long-term commitment to do the work,
so in the end some adhoc documentation has been created, but it's not
properly maintained, poorly structured, and often obsolete

2) Trac wiki sucks as the system to keep documentation; in my personal
opinion, we could do *much* better if we created a Github-style wiki,
where the documentation is hierarchically structured using the file
system and stored in Markdown files.

First, it is then version controlled in a useful way, and second,
besides using the Github interface, one could come up with some
scripting e.g. using pandoc to generate PDFs, etc. as you suggested.

3) Finally, the files can be in some way fitted into a translation
system like Transifex or Pootle. You will see that the manpages are
already connected to Transifex. We can't do it with the Trac wiki.

> So my original intent was to bring the web site documentation up to
> the same level as the help feature and perhaps create a PDF so it can
> be easily downloaded.

I don't believe that this is worth it. I think that the primary source
of documentation should be the manpage, and work on the manpage from
which the online help system is generated is the most worthwhile
investment of time.

I do agree though, that not everything should go into the manpage, but
for this kind of documentation, I think that Trac wiki has proven itself
to be a bad choice (see above regarding my personal opinion on the
subject).

> Are there any specific persons associated with this effort so I can
> coordinate with them?

Sadly, there aren't.

> I also have some questions that need clarification that might also be included 
> in the Help so that every user will also have the information.

Feel free to ask on the list (better one thread per question); hopefully
someone will help you to find the answers.

> For example. The Help says that only EXT2 file systems can be usewd with 
> Undelete, but this page http://www.trembath.co.za/mctutorial.html#anchor14 
> indicates that EXT3 is also supported for this. That makes sense, because EXT2 
> and 3 are identical except for the addition of the journal. However, that is not 
> mentioned in the Help. Also, what about EXT4? My understanding (limited) of EXT4 
> is that it retains many architectural components of EXT2/3 but that there are 
> some differences. So is Undelete supported on EXT4?

I'm not sure. The undelete functionality is provided by e2fslibs-dev and
it hasn't been tested for a very long time, at least not that I know of
anyone who did if for ext3/4. I think that ext3/4 might be "supported"
if you turn off the journal (so, basically, downgrade to ext2), but I'm
not sure how useful that is. Sorry, you'll have to investigate to find
the answer. This is all I can say, even though it's not very helpful...

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev