On Wed, 13 Aug 2014, Brooks Davis wrote:
On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 02:23:00PM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
The existing /etc/motd breaks many of our document rules and has some
weird language constructs. The current version in HEAD:
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/etc/motd?view=co
Here is a rewrite. URLs are now the only thing on a line, instead of
inline and hard to locate. No contractions are used. Odd phrases are
rephrased:
Here is the proposed new version and a diff:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/motd/motd
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/motd/motd.diff
Making it clear that commands are to be typed without quotes is a little
difficult. This file is plain text, so no out-of-band highlighting is
available. ANSI colors or bold could be used, but the terminal is not
guaranteed to be able to display them. The only really clear way would
be to put commands on a separate line, indented. That takes up more
space, maybe not a big deal.
The other issue is whether we should mention the search box on the web
page, which is not very effective at finding things.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
My first thought was that it's definitely better, but too long since 25
rows of text won't fit on the default console.
My second thought was that a better approach might be to replace most of
the contents with a URL like:
http://freebsd.org/getting-started-with-freebsd-11
and a reference to a local copy of the content a release time. That
would allow unlimited formatting, let us target different user
audiences, and let us improve the online version over time.
That would allow much more vertical space in the actual "intro" file,
and clearer explanations:
Type
man man
for an introduction to manual pages.
Where should the intro file be stored? /usr/doc is not always present.
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