[GRLUG] Documentation

[Bob Kline]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 1:30 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:

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