[GRLUG] Documentation

[Bob Kline]

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.
>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20110222/f6f00248/attachment.html>