Re: Most minimal configuration challenge

[Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Felipe Contreras wrote on Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 20:49:52 -0500:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 8:27 PM Lawrence Velázquez <larryv@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2022, at 10:17 AM, Ray Andrews wrote:
> > > Experts have the mind of experts.  So the above no doubt makes
> > > perfect sense to the expert who wrote it and already understands
> > > it, but is useless to me.
> >
> > I think this is pretty harsh toward Daniel.  I have no doubt he
> > could have written a more verbose and comprehensive explanation in
> > a paragraph or two, but I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd
> > objected to its wordiness.
> 

There's no easy way to explain zstyle in a sentence since it has so many
moving parts (keys, values, contexts, context patterns).

> It's not either or. I constantly try to put myself in the shoes of
> newcomers, and sometimes an explanation I give is deemed not clear
> enough. Does that mean I failed and I'm stupid? No, it's just
> feedback, I can try another one.
> 
> People who are not constantly being subject to criticism often think
> it's something negative, but it isn't, it's just an opportunity to try
> something better.
> 
> Ultimately the people who should judge prose meant for newcomers, are
> newcomers. If they say it isn't clear, then it isn't clear.

It wasn't meant to be clear.  It was meant to be a summary of the
answer, so that:

1. Anyone who RTFM'd following my post would know whether they were
reading the right part of the docs.

2. Anyone who /already knew/ the topic would know they could skip that
pointer to the docs.

3. Readers (including lurkers) would get a fishing rod rather than a fish.