On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:58:56 -0500, Stephen Cochran wrote: > One general observation about the linux community: Stop with the easter egg > hunt mentality, please! I have been fighting installation problems for weeks > now, and finding seemingly basic information is excruciatingly hard. One > very simple example: Why do the docs say "See man mount (5)", when the > actual way to get to the information is "man 5 mount"?
This is by no means Linux specific, this is the same for all unixen I've ever seen. Individual tools' man pages don't know the syntax of the man command - why should they? eg. On some systems you'd need "man -s 5 mount". > And guess what ISN'T > documented in the default man page? You guessed it, the syntax for pulling > whatever the heck is referenced in parentheses! Stop being cryptic for the > fun of it. How about "man man"? Seems a logical place to look, mine documents sections. There's an explanation of sections (and other goodies) in "man intro", though to be honest I've no idea how you are supposed to know that. Maybe man should tell you the first time you use it. Or even list it in "See also". > I've been fighting what are probably elementary problems for weeks now, > and no help has been forthcoming on any of the mailing lists or forums > where I have posted questions. I usually find mailing lists are very helpful. There's two main reasons why you don't get responses on a mailing list: (i) You asked a question so easy you really ought to go and read more. Maybe the documentation, or mailing list archive. (ii) You asked a question no-one knows the answer to. In which case, try asking other, related questions to help work it out. > And before you dismiss me as some neophyte luser, I was developing on > Unix systems 20 years ago, although not in the past 10 years. I'm a > professional software developer, and am no slouch at solving problems > when they come up. With all due respect, I'm surprised you don't know or can't figure out how to work "man" with such experience. Finally, I do know the pain you describe. You are right, lots of things are not well documented and there are "magic steps" which are rarely spoken of, but unless someone actually writes the documentation it will continue to be that way. The best person to document something is someone who's just done it. We need more Jarods... Cheers, Martin. _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
