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On 10/02/00 4:07 PM, Elizabeth Ross (beth -at- vcubed -dot- com) wrote:
>Interestingly enough, here's what Philip Greenspun himself has to say (from
>the article referenced below):
>
>As long as I'm setting down all of the things that I hate about computer
>books, let me add cheerfulness.
[snip]
>IMHO, this idea sucks.
First, thank you for an excellent link. Greenspun's experience writing
his book is dead-accurate, and I enjoyed the way he told it.
Second, he does indeed say the stuff you quoted above (heavily snipped
here, of course). However, he contradicts himself later on:
>... we ended up printing the inside back cover
>with a nice "no CD" symbol underneath which ran my text:
>
>Would you really want to take Web publishing advice from someone who had
>to burn a CD-ROM to distribute his software? Come to http://demo.webho.com
>for electronic versions of the source code examples in this book, for live
>demos of the software in use, and for the packaged source code to larger
>systems. IMHO, this URL is better than a CD-ROM. You can't lose it. You
>can't scratch it. You can't leave it in your office when you need it at
>home. You can give it to your friends and still keep it for yourself.
>
>People laugh when they read this so I think it worked.
He admits to including a section that conveys a point and makes people
laugh. Not only that, he says that the mere fact that people laughed
*means* it conveyed the point.
From this seeming contradiction, I can only assume that Greenspun
dislikes certain kinds of humor, but doesn't forbid humor in technical
documentation. Given how much I enjoyed his writing and sense of humor,
I'd have to say that I agree with his loosely-defined "rule," but that
this in no way rules out humor in documentation.
