Well, seems rather decisive, but <div>"man man" comes up with "man is </div><div>the system's manual pager." </div><div><br></div><div>That only leaves diving back in to</div><div>what is the system. But the point</div>
<div>is not wax philosophically. To most</div><div>here "Linux" means more than a </div><div>set of system calls - it's just a </div><div>practical matter. In that sense,</div><div>almost every GRLUG submission</div>
<div>should have "NOT LINUX" in the</div><div>subject line, because they rarely</div><div>have anything to do with system</div><div>calls. Better to have people say</div><div>"LINUX" then......</div><div>
<br></div><div>"man man" shows a list of the 9</div><div>types of pages one will typically</div><div>in the man pages. To my way of</div><div>looking at it, they are what used</div><div>to be meant in a standard Unix</div>
<div>distribution, and would still pretty</div><div>much define what one means by</div><div>a Linux system, not a Linux distribution.</div><div><br></div><div>The short discussion suggests a variety</div><div>of views on the matter, and also suggests</div>
<div>people don't use man pages much any</div><div>more because even most Linux users </div><div>don't use the command line much any</div><div>more. That was a dumb terminal era</div><div>approach I guess.....</div>
<div><br></div><div> -- Bob</div><div> </div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Adam Tauno Williams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:awilliam@whitemice.org">awilliam@whitemice.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 12:41 -0500, Bob Kline wrote:<br>
> Do I see some confusion here over<br>
> man pages and manuals.<br>
<br>
</div>Nope.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> I see man pages as being system<br>
> documentation. i.e., how to use<br>
> Linux, not applications that run under<br>
> it.<br>
<br>
</div>Which is incorrect. Man pages document many things, only sections #1<br>
and #9 relates specifically to LINUX [Kernel routines].<br>
<br>
See the man page for man.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> We've had rip roaring discussions in<br>
> the past about what is Linux and what<br>
> is not.<br>
<br>
</div>The kernel is LINUX, nothing else is LINUX. Period. There is nothing<br>
to discuss about that topic.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> But short of such flowery<br>
> discourse is the common need to just<br>
> see what all the options are.<br>
<br>
</div>It is not at all a matter of opinion.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> In the early days of Unix the philosophy<br>
> was to have simple commands that did<br>
> one thing well.<br>
<br>
</div>It is common to position this as a philosophy; I don't accept that<br>
there was every much of a philosophy behind UNIX (which LINUX isn't,<br>
LINUX is a work-alike). UNIX is primarily a heaping pile of pragmatic<br>
compromises - most of which work extremely well and many of which are<br>
creaky.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> I think it was even put<br>
> something like that. Commands were<br>
> piped so the user could build up the<br>
> exactly function needed at the time,<br>
> and one uses aliases to save often<br>
> used sequences.<br>
<br>
</div>Most of what you describe above is a function of the shell; and not<br>
unique to UNIX.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> Anyway, I find the current Linux documentation<br>
> world in a bit of disarray.<br>
<br>
</div>I'd agree. Disarray is a sadly natural part of complex systems.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> One would line to<br>
> find something that will get them by most of<br>
> the time.<br>
<br>
</div>Use yelp, it integrates in the man and info content. A good desktop<br>
indexing system is also useful and all the mainstream ones include<br>
documentation content by default.<br>
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