Linux Gazette: A Need for Documentation

“Giving everything a GUI has become a popular trend in
the Linux community. This implies that more and more program
authors tend to use a GUI-based configuration dialog.

However, you lose an important thing when GUIs are used for
everything: documentation. People who can point-and-click are often
the one who think: “`Why should I read the programs documentation?
I simply point-and-click–and it works.”

But it would be better to encourage people to read
documentation. In fact, the better the documentation, the simpler
it is to use a program. Take the Apache web server for example, it
comes with heavy documentation. As a result, anybody who can
understand a little English is able to use Apache and configure
it–without using a point-and-click interface.

This article tries to encourage programmers to document their
projects, as well as to provide ideas and tips on doing so.”

Complete
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