Suggestion regarding the documentation

Why does the project use a font with lookalike but wrong characters e.g. for dashes, single-quotes etc.?!
Even stuff that has a text format that suggests to the reader 'this is code' contains this sh*t.

For I don't know how many times copy&pasting stuff from the documentation came back to bite me in the a** because I missed changing one pseudo single-quote.

Thought I should finally take the time to leave a note here hoping for a discussion and a change in the future...
Changing this would seem to be a low-hanging fruit to improve 'accessibility'.





 

being an open source project, you can always fix the documentation as you see fit on GitHub and post your fixes.

the more I dabble with linuxcnc the more I get used to the things that I saw as annoyances and see them more as functional. if it's cutting chips does it matter what the interface or documentation looks like

(axis is now beginning to grow on me... and I am always reading the online docs trying to learn and understand more)

Actually the documents are rather complicated to say the least and not easy to change some things. They get built with some magic I think as I worked on the documents for 10 years and still don't know how they get to their final form.

Open source projects get better when people spend their time to improve the project.

JT

Yes, I know how open source projects work and that I'm free to fix it myself.

Still there are users and developers. This is a hint from a user on an issue. Most likely I - as a user - would spend days to even get a grasp on the documentation build system, while somebody familiar with the system would need 5 minutes to do the actual fix. If I was to contribute time to the project, I'd rather invest it in things that I know how to do.

In my opinion the issue is significant - especially for less computer-literate folks that will get understandably frustrated by the fact that snippets copied from the very documentation fail to work.

Sure - if the doc-system held together by lost knowledge + pixie dust then things might not be that easy...

If you find an easy way to fix it let me know and I'll fix it. Copy and Paste from the pdf docs has annoyed me for a decade or more...

JT

RGH wrote:

This is a hint from a user on an issue.

5 minutes to do the actual fix. If I was to contribute time to the project, I'd rather invest it in things that I know how to do.

In my opinion the issue is significant

If the issue is that significant to you, then perhaps instead of complaining about how not perfect this completely free to you software / software documentation is, and instead of dropping "hints" you could take some time to actually contribute in a constructive way and at least point out the specific examples where you see issues from specific locations so that those of us who are willing to take the "5 minutes to do the actual fix" could do so without hours of trying to decipher your hints. Otherwise it just comes off as ungrateful trolling.

I think you will find that most of the developers here are very willing to help. That said, it's impossible to fix and make everything perfect.