Re: Licensing, again

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Pascal Obry wrote:
> Sorry Andrew but with this attitude you probably won't get any more help
> on this forum. That is the first time I see somebody asking for help,
> getting it and reacting this way just because a link as to be clicked to
> get the definite answer!

The bare instruction "See X" can be a bit brief,
all the more when the content at the end of the link X is only suitable
for a short exegesis that does in the end show there are compilers
that may meet peoples needs, and insofar have the "correct" license for
specific uses. But summarizing this fact in the unadorned
"See X" gives information far from obvious in this case! The absence of
any hint to a causal connection doesn't help either, in my view.

A few more words from your reusable repertoire of polite boilerplate text
can help prevent the unintended consequence of an instruction being
characterized as condescending. It can be condescending when the connection
between question Y and answer "See X" is *not* immediately obvious
in any way (I think this is the case in this thread).
  You're being treated as slightly stupid, or not-knowing-yet, if your
mind can't unveil the implicit logical details of the connection between
*general* "See X" and a *specific*, complex, and context dependent question.

Compare:
Would you be content with  "See Ch. 3 of the RM" when someone asks
a specific question about enumeration types?

One very useful detail is a textual *label* attached to a pointer to a
*specific* passage of text.
In Ada (culture), we are told, you try to avoid being implicit and overly
brief, don't you ;-)
 Imagine a classroom situation, someone asks, 'Why?',
and the the teacher answers 'See X' invariably. That'd be a caricature
of a teacher in my book, even when from some formal point of view he or she
might be correct. 

If, at a help desk, they just gave you a thick book they may be logically
correct, but they wouldn't, uh, help; what they do in fact is explain just
briefly, routinely, and without straining their muscles,  how this book
of instructions will best answer the question, if only saying
that "this book does answer your question about Y in section X." etc.
Note the specifics.

Maybe this is an exaggerated analogy featuring the couple Joe and Mary:

 MARY (in the kitchen): Joe? Do you know where Y is?
 JOE (in the dinging room): Yes. Somewhere in the house.
 MARY (rushing towards the dinging room, angry): _____

Joe may be correct, but he could easily have done better.
Fill in the blanks, or change Joe's answer. :-)



-- Georg