Spec fiction or that which was specified but never implemented

It's the first of the month, which is a great time to document something you haven't documented before with a README file

I finally added video of my talk "Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears" to my site. It's my guided tour of a few little-used extension points in Markdown.

With Git, I sometimes check out a single file, such as a shell script, from another branch. I didn't know how to do this with Jujutsu, so I took notes on how, plus why jj's equivalent confuses me.

The most mysterious thing about writing to me is paragraphs. I produce them fairly reliably, but without thinking about them. When I do think about them, when not writing, I feel as if I'm on the edge of a terrible chasm full of secret knowledge.

the struggle of having ever moderated any online community is you now cannot go through any community without being like, oh, they should ban this person. this person hasn't done anything wrong yet but the vibes are off and you should ban the shit out of them.

they published 2,118 RFCs before going "we should define what 'should' means"

Had to reset the clock for "time since hearing a dick joke made on stage at a tech conference" which was standing at years 🙁

I took some notes on @hilton.org.uk's prescriptions for solving the team tech blog problem and suggest one of my own

english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.

I deal with PDFs more regularly than I prefer, but I don't mind too much because I have some go-to tools. A new note dusted off from my drafts folder

It's the first of the month and you know what that means: time to document something with a README file

Good summary of models of funding in OSS! The article is focused on docs, but these payment options are common across all OSS work. Regarding commissions: if you want commissions, you should consider copying examples like Geomys, which make it easier for corporations to pay you for OSS work.

Serious open source docs work has a cost. I wrote down every way that I know of that gets docs authors and maintainers paid.

I cleaned up some disused dotfiles (and worse, code to manage to said dotfiles) and ended up taking some notes on some software I really like: Stow.

The `jj` version control system generates branch names that leave something to be desired. I took notes on an alternative template.

Computer science is the art of preventing computers from doing things. Big NO notation is used to formally specify how many things you have prevented the computer from doing.

Looking forward to working with @yanthomas.dev to devote some love to the @biomejs.dev docs so they better serve the entire community: readers, contributors, reviewers, and maintainers!

Last year, I wrote about waking up a sleeping computer remotely. I took some new notes on how I've made it much more convenient.

I think my call to action here is to pay for no-vc non-public small business made software and cut them a little slack on downtime because it’s where your favorite expensive big guys are headed anyway

Every time I see someone talk about Claude I think about how they switched from female to male names as soon as they wanted the robots to seem like experts vs personal assistants.

The fish shell's `set_color` command taught me a little lesson about output streams, escape sequences, and things that aren't magic. Plus, I got a tiny change into the fish docs.

The fish shell's `set_color` command taught me a little lesson about output streams, escape sequences, and things that aren't magic. Plus, I got a tiny change into the fish docs.

I will go to my grave hollering IF YOU TEACH PEOPLE WELL WHILE TREATING THEM WELL THEY CAN LEARN

It's the first of the month and you're no fool. Why not share what you know by writing a README file?

I think people took this thread to be about not using LLMs to replace user research, and sure. But it's really about talking to people and caring about them and what they need when we make things for them.

I recently learned that there's a <q> HTML element. It's the inline counterpart to <blockquote>, except much weirder.

And with that, so ends my last day w Astro Docs. So proud of the docs our community made, & honoured I had the chance to lead them. Open to new adventures in docs/community. If you liked learning, using, or contributing to Astro...maybe some of that was me! Maybe I can bring that to your project!

I took some brief notes on contributing to Git for the first time

How do we get to more than just three web engines owned by three US companies? It's a gargantuan question, with no easy or right answer. I've put together a draft report, thinking about it through a very specific approach - please enjoy: Servo Readiness Report webtransitions.org/servo-readin...

Why a 10-year-old Tumblr post by @galaxykate.bsky.social is still the most important thing I've read about generating text

Today's the first Monday of the month, which is a great time to document the undocumented with a README

Notes on pandoc for the people, the pandoc that runs in your web browser

writing code should not be the primary way of contributing to free open source software

You might know camelCase or snake_case or kebab-case, but do you know Tall Man?

If you work with many Git remotes or submodules, you can save time on fetches with parallel jobs

new post from Daniel on OSS docs! Always worth reading :)

Hey, web specification authors: I dare you to title a spec without a Pascal case "Web" prefix. I bet you can't do it!

Cool to see @astro.build used as an example of what a larger project does to organize ALL THE VARIOUS DOCS OMG. Even our meta Astro Docs Docs (AD^2) gets a mention. All you really need to get started is Daniel's excellent README checklist. (Then a Starlight site when you need more "breathing room")

A reader recently wrote to me asking about where to put docs, especially planning and design docs, in a new open source project. I blogged my response. #documentation

If you came to my talk at FOSDEM, "Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears," thank you! My talk page has credits, slides, and further links. (This page works now, if you tried to go to it earlier.)

xkcd 2347 is the unofficial logo of FOSDEM

A note on "assertions documents," Cunningham's Law, and a skill development pattern in tech writing

No other word has done more damage to the craft of writing in recent years than “content”. Even if you’re using the word “content” ironically, or as a cute little joke, don’t. When someone calls writing “content” they’re pissing on someone’s hard work & passion. “Content” is Technosatan’s henchword.

If you regularly get a Knowledge Management bee in your bonnet, as I do, then look at this piece (and @emckean.bsky.social 's talk). It's absolutely packed with useful concepts and tips from people who've been there, done that, and compressed it all into tiny shiny diamonds.

A brief note on alt text and John Lee Clark's essay, "Against Access"

Today's my first workday of the year and some things are slightly unfamiliar again. The new year great time to document something undocumented with a README, while it's still "new"

There's a very nice writeup of my talk at OSS Tokyo in LWN! lwn.net/SubscriberLi... (gift link) Thanks again to the wonderful @kissane.myatproto.social and @ddbeck.com who created the Docs Advisor and Docs Archetypes (github.com/google/opendocs)!

It's so satisfying to get a tiny typo fix merged into a project that I like. I'm doing my part—even if it's just a couple bytes.

At #WriteTheDocs Berlin in October, a few people told me, unprompted, that my README checklist helped them document something. Maybe it can help you document something too!