Please define "defined" in this context

[Whit Blauvelt]

On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 09:27:58AM -0500, Marc Powell wrote:

> All the objects are referenced as Definitions so 'not defined' isn't art
> so much as English.

Hi Marc,

Thanks for all the pointers. When you say "All the objects are referenced as
Definitions" - capitalizing "Definitions" makes it clear it's a term of art.

I take it then that the inability of the .cfg file to simply function like
those of many other configuration files in the *nix universe and pass on
flags is a constraint imposed by OOP architectural philosophy? It looks a
bit like needless multiplication of entities to a naive view like mine. But
I'm sure I'll get used to it.

I'm sure at some point the documentation will all come into focus too. At
first acquaintance, it's sketchy, scattered and disorganized. I've been
doing various sorts of coding and sysadmin for 20 years, and usually new
docs are easy for me to grasp. Navigating from the "Nagios 3.x Documentation
Table of Contents" - which is where Nagios itself sends me for
"Documentation" - it's not at all clear where to go for a definition of
"Definition". Nor would it be helpful to just read the whole thing - trying
to absorb "Passive Host State Translation" and other arcane, specialized
topics leads to cognitive overload and side-tracking, not an answer to the
pragmatic question of why Nagios config files don't follow the norms of
the *nix space. 

Nothing against that! Nagios has strong capabilities, and I'm committed to
use it. But the "Configuration Overview" page in the Doc would be much
improved if it really gave an overview. Instead, it's just a stub of an
outline that quickly shunts the reader off to other documents, which in turn
are just stubs of outlines that quickly shunt the reader off to yet other
places. The job of an overview, IMHO, should be to give an overview, all in
one place. It should make sense by itself. Sending the reader to other docs,
which send the reader to other docs, which send the reader to other docs -
just to get a sense of what the overview is ... well, that's terrible
documentation writing, no matter how much time it took to set it up that
way.

The Overview should function like an Introduction in a book. The
Introduction can't demand that the reader read the whole book first to make
sense of the Introduction.

Maybe at some point I should contribute to the documentation, once I have a
good working overview myself.

Regards,
Whit

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