Bill,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
> There are a few great man pages, and more and more they have an EXAMPLES
> section, but many are written to be exactly as concise as possible to
> provide just enough information to be almost useful to the reader and a good
~~~~~~
> reference for someone who has already mastered the command.
Sometimes you remind me of my old Army Captain, Captain Bright (no, this is
not a pseudonym, that was his real name). He had to apologize to me one time,
and the way he carefully worded his apology made it more of an insult than the
original insult. :-)
[I am sure that what I am about to say will generate much discussion and
gnashing of teeth on the list. Those of faint heart, beware.]
Reading man pages is a learned art. You can not get anything close to what you
could get out of a man page without learning that art. Likewise, of course,
writing a good man page took not only learning the art, but swearing by
(and at) it.
[By the way, I know that you know this. You are an old war horse, like me.
This is for the younger people on the list.]
"man" pages (and the "man" stands for "manual", no bigotry here) were written
to deliver as much information at the beginning of the page as possible, so
your 120 BAUD modem would not have to output that much. They were written
much like a newspaper article SHOULD be written, with the "who, what, when,
where and why" in the first couple of paragraphs, with detail down below.
But you do not, for example, get as much out of a man page as you can without
looking at the entire page. Down at the bottom are traditionally the
"features" that don't quite work (sometimes called "unimplemented features",
sometimes listed as "Bugs". You should also take the time to look up the
other commands in the section "See also:", and investigating the files in
"Files:"
Even the "Authors" section often gives you valuable information. Who wrote
the command? Who wrote the "man" page?
A lot of people have never said "man man", or even looked at the intro pages
to each section of the manual. Lots of information there.
Of course there is now "info", but for some reason I still prefer the
"man" command.
md
--
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director Linux International(R)
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St.
Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org
Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association
(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries.
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to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus
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countries.
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