Well, I for one have sent you a complaint about the size of the
comp.lang.c FAQ. Perhaps you didn't receive it.
News articles bigger than 100K are a *major* pain for UUCP systems
running over dodgy phone lines -- and until last year, we were such a
system. Watching it try three times to transfer an article in one
large gulp, fail, and start again from scratch, is extremely annoying.
Think of those sites in Eastern Europe with their crackly manual
switchboards and dodgy clone modems.
Collating and reassembling multiple parts of an FAQ is not a problem
if they're posted with proper References: lines. Often I've read part
N of a multi-part FAQ, and decided to hit left arrow to see part N-1.
On the other hand, reading a 100K long article is unpleasant. I can't
easily pick out just the bits I want -- especially since you apparently
"don't feel like" putting your monster FAQ in a standard digest format,
or providing any hints on how to search for specific sections, or even
giving a full list of the questions at the top.
The actual "abridged" list of questions seems to be in a separate
article. If you're happy to split the questions from the answers, and
rely on people finding both, then why not split the FAQ into sections?
Surely that makes more sense?
Frankly, if I were a newbie sitting at a VT100, I wouldn't sit and page
through (on average) 50K of file to get to the answer to my question;
and you provide no hints as to how to jump to the right place. Do you
really find that people read the whole thing?
Of course, splitting an FAQ into sections can lead to other problems.
Why do people post all the parts of an FAQ on the same day at the same
time? Why not post them one part every few days? That way, on a
misconfigured site the user has to wait less time before some sort of
FAQ shows up to clue him in.
My largest FAQ file is under 40K, and the FAQ files as a whole have a
quick index, with codes you can use in order to jump to the appropriate
line of the appropriate section. Each section is posted with an
overview explaining how to find the other sections. Admittedly I've
only just put together the quick index, but even before that I used
digest format and tables of contents...
Of course, in the HTML versions of my FAQ, you just click. Also, because
clutter is less of a problem with HTML files, I provide extra "side
notes" not in the ASCII version.
mathew
[ Sorry if this seems somewhat harsh, but a lot of people seem to be saying
(basically) "I've got a T1 connection and 21" monitor, so up yours with
a wire brush Mr VT100 UUCP". I can remember what it's like to have a
24 line terminal and a 9600 baud UUCP connection, and the inconsiderate
attitude of some people on this mailing list really grates. Frankly,
I expect better from FAQ maintainers. Spitting on an 8K limit is
fair enough, but a lot of systems out there are unhappy with
individual articles bigger than 64K. ]
-- http://www.mantis.co.uk/~mathew/ Looking for: Bug-tracking systems for UNIX, DOS and Windows
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