WFM? WTF? (was RTFM (was Re: What is SDL client supposed to look like?))

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at indiegamedesign dot com>]

Eric McDonald wrote:
>
> And if someone (not you, Lincoln) would have RTFM (in this case,
> INSTALL-win.txt), he would have seen this clearly mentioned at
> the beginning of the document.

Why on Earth would anyone read INSTALL-win.txt in order to know the
status of SDL development?  The logical place to look is in the \SDL
folder.  Which is where I looked, and there's nothing there.  Don't crab
at me if you have a different "mental model" of where all the
information is supposed to go, and you think it's supposed to be
"obvious" to newbies where the information is disseminated.  It isn't
obvious, and newbies don't know your estabilshed developer rituals.
Thus it's incumbent upon you to answer questions posed in a timely
manner rather than simply saying RTFM.

Especially when the answer is 1 simple sentence, like "yes the SDL
client is very much incomplete."

Of course I *could* just read all the source code and reconstruct a
mental picture from scratch, but that's what I call a Sheer Waste Of
Time as opposed to just asking people.

> It
> doesn't take much work to RTFLA (where LA = "list archive"), given
> that it is searchable.

I RTFLA before posting.  It was rather disjoint on the subject of SDL.
In 3 pages of posts, the 1st page was all my own posts.  Nothing recent
about it.  Again, when the answer doesn't immediately pop out from
searching, reading through every gory detail is a Sheer Waste Of Time.
The important question is whether you guys even have any committment to
the SDL client, whether anyone is doing any active work on it at all.

> I've got better things to do than
> spoon-feed someone with information that is readily available....

I bet you haven't had a newcomer show up to your Xconq project in a
looooooooooooong time.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.