Re: Building 22.1, on Ubuntu

[Tim X]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE>
>> Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 13:23:33 +0200
>> Cc: emac list <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
>> 
>> 
>> Am 08.09.2007 um 12:54 schrieb Dave Pawson:
>> 
>> > I guess I need to translate these into something that Ubuntu  
>> > understands.
>> > Back to google.
>> 
>> Ahh, really? Isn't it obvious that the libraries Xaw3d, Xpm, jpeg,  
>> tiff, ungif, and png are missing and also all X11 libraries and C  
>> header files?
>
> Even if it's obvious that Xaw3d is missing when `configure' says
> something about "-lXaw3d", the name of the Ubuntu package that one
> needs to download is quite clearly NOT obvious.
>
> Now, if `configure' would say something like
>
>   Xaw3d library not found, suggest to download xaw3dg-dev package
>
> _then_ it would have been obvious.
>
> Can we please look at this from the OP's point of view, instead of
> demonstrating how much smarter we-all are?  That way, we might
> actually learn how to improve Emacs, in addition to being nice and
> helpful.
>

Eli, I don't disagree with your sentiments. However, given that the INSTALL
doc actually explicitly warns about the need to install the dev versions in
addition to the runtime versions and even says that these normally have a
-dev extension, a simple search of the packages looking for xaw3d with a
dev extension shouldn't be too much to expect. If the OP had asked
something like "I can't find or don't know what the development version of
the library is called", responses would have been more positive and
helpful. Even if he had stated he read the INSTALL docs, but didn't
understand what they asked it would have been a lot better as then we
really could improve things as we would know that the document wasn't clear
enough. However, it really seems that the OP isn't doing the minimum
sensible things, such as reading the documentation. This doesn't help him
nor does it give us any information that will assist us to improve things
other than the already recognised problem of people not reading the basic
documentation first. I don't think spoon feeding will really improve
anything and is likely to be counter productive because it encourages poor
practice - we will end up with a NG filled with basic questions that
clutter up things and make it harder to see the questions that really do
need attention from more experienced users and can help us make things
better. 

I would certainly agree that if you cannot provide a positive helpful
response, then its better to just not respond rather than respond with
sarcastic or arrogant comments. this too just adds to the clutter and waste
of bandwidth. However, sometimes, when your having one of those days or
when the moon is in the wrong phase, people will just fire off - thats just
human nature. 

Tim




-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au