-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 Tom Shilson wrote: | I think that I have adapted to the Unix-style documentation. | | I wrote that sentence and then started thinking of the number of times | that I looked at the command syntax in a man page and have been totally | mystified. Man pages are for people who already know how it works, but | just need to refresh their memory on some detail. I agree after all! |
If it's just the syntax abstract you're having problems with, I can concur to some degree. I'd like to point out though, that Linux system manual, however it has improved in the past three or four years, is not among the better ones. It's been volunteer-driven, and although there have been documenting standards, most of the beginner-aimed documentation has been separated in goal-oriented HowTos and bigger, concept-oriented guides which reside in The Linux Documentation Project, which goes at the cost of system manuals. Then there was the entire confusion about the official online documentation standard, which was meant to be man from the start, then texinfo was aggressively lobbied for for a while, and now it seems it's silently died or something. But it does leave consequences, because a lot of the man pages have been unmaintained for a long while, and some still are (for the bigger GNU projects, libc, gcc, etc., for example). To experience the true quality of UNIX manuals, one would have to work with something as traditional as SunOS or HP-UX, for example. Now that's what I call man pages. :) Kind regards, - -- ~ Grega Bremec ~ gregab at p0f dot net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFwb3Bfu4IwuB3+XoRA5swAJ0ZsEM5R3XWPyRZpCpMJU/XjMJR9QCfSfeX MvcKLRlVA7NvuEgH+zdiorU= =zGw5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
