# Guides Vs References

Before coming up with docs, figure out their use. It can either be as a guide (provides solutions to problems encountered) or a reference (similar to man pages, where we provide detailed explanations).

## For guides:

* Be as brief as possible, providing reference links for users that want to explore i.e. don't aim from completeness, but rather practicality.
* Prefer providing code or command snippets where possible.
* Preferable have another team member review the docs. This helps eliminate blindspots due to our current knowledge.
* Organize the document in such a way that it starts with the most actionable steps.
* Avoid stream of consciousness writing.

### Example

Wrong:

When setting up guix OS, I couldn't get `tmux` to start, getting `tmux: invalid LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG`. Running `locale -a` failed too. It took me a while to figure out the solution for this problem, and I attempted to reinstall `glibc-locales` which didn't help. After a lot of research, I found that the root cause was that my applications were built on a different version of `glibc`. I ran `guix update` and the problem disappeared.

Correct:

`tmux` failing with `tmux: invalid LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG` could be caused by having packages build on a different version of `glibc`. Attempt:

> locale -a # should also fail
> guix update # rebuilds your packages with your current glibc