On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 05:08:43PM -0500, Donald Allen wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:40 PM, Ted Unangst <t...@tedunangst.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 09, 2012, Donald Allen wrote:
> >> OpenBSD's pride in its man pages is justified, for the most part. But
> >> having recently decided to come back to OpenBSD after a long hiatus, I
> >> found myself completely baffled by how to get battery status
> >> information via sysctl(3). I use suckless.org's dwm and there's a
> >
> > I agree that the man page is unclear if you're unfamiliar with the
> > subject, but adding an example for sensors will only help people who
> > want to read that sysctl. Other nested sysctls are also kind of
> > complicated.
>
> I don't see that as a reason not to begin by providing an example for
> sensors, with others to follow. If you are concerned about the man
> page becoming unwieldy, which I think is valid, then the examples
> could be somewhere else, with a pointer in the man-page.
You example code is poort, since it reintroduces MAXSENSORDEVICES,
which has been abolished for a reason.
Tom many exmaplex clutter the manpages indeed. We have src, which is
a fine set of examples.
One minute of browsing through sysctl.c and I hit upon
sysctl_sensors() and print_sensordev(). Which provide a good example,
handle sensor devices at various depth in the tree, and are kept up to
date if needed.
-Otto
>
> >
> > In almost every case, though, the sysctl program source should
> > suffice. There are a few other man pages which advise the reader to
> > refer to the source, so I think a short note along those lines would
> > be best.
>
> I agree that pointers into the source would be useful, but see no
> reason not have both those and examples.
>
> /Don
