Suggestion: READMe labeling for mass downloaders
dragonarts:
I decided to stop lurking in the underbrush today and ask a question/make a suggestion/air a gripe. I was trolling for hacks and mods that are awesomely updated or created for FreeTime, and once again encountered the "everybody labels their documentation the same" syndrome. Yes, even here where people tend to more more awesome than average.
This is what I'm talking about: when I troll for downloads, I typically grab anywhere from three or four to a couple dozen before I unzip/unrar anything and install it. Then I select a bunch at once, unzip them all, and drag and drop them into my downloads folder. This works great except one tiny and annoying problem. I read readme's, and when you unzip several downloads at once, you get this long string of messages informing you that a file README or rtfm already exists and do you want to overwrite it. This makes it necessary to unzip one file at a time, and change the name on the documentation before proceeding to the next download. Very time consuming. Very annoying.
Is there some unknown rule that says that creators can't label their documentation with a unique filename that gives a hint of the download associated with it? Something like "rtfm-coffeecuphack" would do nicely. Then I can actually *read* all the rtfm's without laboriously unzipping each one and relabeling them manually myself.
I don't know; maybe I'm the only one this bothers. It's possible that I'm the only one actually reading these things, but since the nice creators went to all that work to write the things, I figure they might even have something useful to say, and I should do them the courtesy of reading the thing.
BattyCoda:
As an aged and actually properly trained software engineer, I say "Hear! Hear!". While I do understand the
engineer mentality of "I'm the only one who is important here.", proper documentation ( including naming conventions )
really does add value to a product. ;
Fake edit: I'm sure there are punctuation errors in that paragraph, just so you know.
bowrain:
That's why I always unzip them to their own folders.
Jelenedra:
Not a viable option for the Director's Cut.
J. M. Pescado:
I never actually read the manuals, so the manuals are written and maintained with all the care and attention of someone who never reads manuals unless something goes wrong. I suggest you do likewise. :P
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