Hi there
On 2017-06-14 01:02, Simon van Meygaarden wrote: The first thing a new user will see when FreeDOS boots, is the message "Type HELP to get support on commands and navigation". When one types HELP, the first line of the Main Help page says "For information on using Help, press F1...". When F1 is pressed, the How to use the FreeDOS Help page is displayed, and this pages mentions WHATIS and APROPOS.
Simon, I *fully agree* with you that the user shouldn't get mislead or confused by references to inexistent commands. No issue. I was not referring to that particular HELP problem. What I was commenting on was the utility of those commands, 'whatis' and 'apropos', which imho is little, or less than expected. All useful information is in the man pages (if the distribution has them at all, of course). The whatis database is nothing but a collection of those short descriptions from man pages; it's useful to get quickly a list of commands related to a topic, nothings else. The very name 'whatis' is actually misleading; whatis blah doesn't tell what blah really is but what is there related to blah. This is confusing particularly for novices who expect that 'whatis' will explain a concept, a technical term or anything. That's why I say it's rather for experienced users who understand those terse descriptions and see immediately what to look at -- using 'man', what else :-) Where are those good old times we had those spiral-bound manuals? Sigh... Best wishes to all, Jiri _________________________ Jiri Wackermann, Dr.phil. Independent researcher Elzstr. 33b D-79261 Gutach i.Br. Deutschland/Germany Tel.: +49 7681 4936707 Tel.: +49 151 29105469 (mobile) E-Mail: m...@jiri-wackermann.eu "Est modus in rebus ..." (Horatius) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user