[Oberon] documentation, installation instructions

[Charles Angelich]

>Message: 6
>Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 21:26:57 -0400
>From: "Douglas G. Danforth" <danforth at greenwoodfarm.com>
>Organization: Greenwood Farm Technologies LLC
>To: oberon at inf.ethz.ch
>Subject: [Oberon] Bluebottle documentation
>Reply-To: oberon at inf.ethz.ch
>
>Andre, Patrik, Pieter, Folks,
>
>Issue: Bluebottle documentation and the "background of obviousness".
>
>I look at the process of moving now to installing Bluebottle and
>blanch (turn white).  Why?  Many of the terms are unfamiliar to
>me.  I would not expect this (some but not so much) after nearly
>40 years of programming.

Welcome to the pit of despair. :-)

>In hopes of improving the Bluebottle installation process I will
>go through the online documentation with annotated
>comments which are meant to be helpful and suggestive of change.
>
>The phrase "What is not said is purposefully left unsaid" (paraphrase of
>Dr. Wirth) is fine, but only up to a point.  For introduction to
>new areas verboseness is better than tersness.  However, it takes
>a great deal of work to make writing simple and concise.  It is easy
>just to through in the kitchen sink.
>
>Let's start with "http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/index.html"
>o "SMP-compatible" I deduce from context but is undefined.
>The rest of the page is fairly clear.
>
>Jump to "http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/instreq.html" (Requirements)
>I have a great deal of difficulty with this page, not so much in
>the specifics but "what is left unsaid".  Namely, where is the
>overview saying "you need a great deal of hardware knowledge
>to install Bluebottle".  Where is the statement that you can
>severly damage or destroy your current system if you are not 
>very careful? 

Idenitical to the situation for Native/Oberon where the options
to trash your existing system are at the top and only if you
take the time to read to the bottom do you find you can install
into one large FAT file and avoid the risks. :-\

>I believe that Bluebottle attracts users to the website first and
>that Native Oberon is a secondary interest to the newcomer so that
>assuming they know about Native is not a good idea.  

There are assumptions that users know how to use DOS and THAT is
not always true anymore.  Obviously they used SOMETHING to download
Oberon to their hardware.  What that something IS is a mystery
apparently?  Within the documenation a user is told that they can
use Oberon's FTP to download ARC files before they even get to the
point of configuring Oberon to be able to connect to their ISP.

>"Partition" needs to be extensively defined with examples given
>so that the user knows what they are getting into.

Good luck on this one. ;-)

>"If you have a boot manager, logical drives in extended partions may also
>work (e.g., with LILO, BootMagic, NT BootLoader)"
>
>What's a "logical drive"?  What's an "extended partition".  What is
>a boot manager? Why is it that the "may" work?

Good point.  Another interesting assumption that they "mystery OS"
used to download Oberon has all of these capabilities.

>"LILO" needs to have Linux associated with it.
>"BootMagic" needs to be removed and replaced with "PartitionMagic"
>since BootMagic is no longer supported.

Probably should be rewritten to use LOADLIN.EXE?

>"The latest version of the ZipTool is also required to unpack the zip
files. "
>But now that I have a Native partition that has no access to the internet
>how do I get "any" file from the web into the Native file space?
>Copy to floppy and then execute ...??... what command from Native?

Until a recent "fix" I suspect the ZipTool might not have actually worked
anyhow?

>"Disk space: In addition to an existing Native Oberon installation, one
free partition of about 100MB for Bluebottle. If you
>want to boot Bluebottle, the partition has to be a primary partition on
the first 8GB of the hard disk."
>
>When I did Partitions.Show I was shown what partions already existed on
>my drives.  Nowhere in the installation process was I given the option
>of "repartioning" my drives.  If this is possible in one of the steps
>then *here* in the Bluebottle documentation it should say "If you don't
>have a boot manager then from within the Native installation you can 
>repartion at step ... of the installation process"

These are SOME of the reasons I have argued in favor of a plain text file
of installation instructions with system requirements, system setup
requirements,
and possibly the names of available software to get for arranging to do all of
this?  Obviously all but the Linux versions of Oberon rely on a working
knowledge of DOS and it's utility applications but no one likes to admit
to relying on lowly old DOS even though the need is obvious.

>
>More later.

I will be looking forward to observing your progress. I wish you
all the luck in the world - you will need it. ;-)



Charles Angelich

The Ghost in the Machine!

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