Man Page Project Can Now Use Official POSIX Docs 229
Martin_Sturm writes "The IEEE consortium announces in a recent press release that it granted permission to the Linux Man Page Project to incorporate material from the official documentation on the POSIX standard. Obviously this is very good news for the Man Page project which now has access to a huge amount of good documentation. Until recently the project could not use this documentation due to copyright restricions."
yay! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:yay! (Score:2, Funny)
bah! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:bah! (Score:3)
Re:bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bah! (Score:2)
Leave it to GNU to create something clumsier than a man page for quick reference and less useful than HTML or PDF for large documents. Man pages are one area that OpenBSD, for example, got it right.
Re:bah! (Score:2)
Re:bah! (Score:5, Informative)
The format is not info but texinfo, which produces output in many forms: TeX (for typeset documents), HTML, as well as info; furthermore, the man pages for many GNU programs are now produced by automatic conversion from the info source.
Texinfo beats roff format for man pages because it supports structure and hyperlinks. XML (or SGML) formats are even better, but "man format" sucks. And I've written a lot of "man pages" in my career.
Re:bah! (Score:2)
Considering all
Re:bah! (Score:2, Informative)
I always hated using info pages until I came across pinfo [dione.ids.pl], a colorized info/man viewer using arrow keys. That phrase is insufficient to describe its utility. It actually makes info pages useful! Debian has it in package repositories and I'd guess that other Linux distributions, perhaps BSDs, etc. package it.
Re:Man & Info (Score:5, Informative)
Like it was done by someone who didn't understand the Unix documentation scheme.
The man pages were never the entire body of Unix documentation, just the first volume. The second volume consisted of longer, more tutorial or in depth documents for the programs that needed it. (Like some compilers, or awk, or [t]roff, etc.)
Way back in prehistory I worked with a port of Version 7 Unix (UTS) that came with a complete set of printed manuals -- the man pages were only half the documentation.
That said, info is lame, and commands that have no man page because they have info doubly so.
Re:bah! (Score:2)
(re: pinfo) (Score:2)
Perhaps this was something to do with the format itself, but IIRC the plain old info command didn't do that. Actually, hold on...
Re:bah! (Score:2)
Re:bah! (Score:2)
This reminds me, back on old-school unix dialects, there used to be a command learn that had short tutorials on different tools. You'd do
and it'd start an interactive little course on it. And if you quit it, it would remember where you were so you could pick up where you left off. As I remember it, it was pretty cool. It had data in some vaguely troff-like format IIRC. Anyway, I haven't seen it around any linux or other modern boxes. Anybody know what happened to it, and where it came
Re:bah! (Score:2)
I'll take my vi text editor that doesn't render HTML instead of displaying the text, thank you very much!
Also, saying "Linux" is too general. For example, it would be better to say, "Red Hat is archaic. Debian is not."
Re:bah! (Score:2)
Man pages are evil... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Man pages are evil... (Score:3, Funny)
man date
man strip
i'd leave the dollar sign out that's illegal
in most states.
Re:Man pages are evil... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Man pages are evil... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Man pages are evil... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man pages are evil... (Score:4, Interesting)
A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:3, Funny)
And back before we had all this open-schopen source, we had to decompile our programs so that we could figure out how it works.
And before we had fancy-shmancy C/C++, we disassembled our programs and found out how they worked from there.
And we liked it!
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:5, Funny)
Ach, you kids and your "brains." When I started we had to do all our thinkin' with just a few neurons at the top of our spinal chords. And we liked it! We loved it!
Brains? Luxury...
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:3)
Ok, you know, there are some jokes that never get old. Others were born that way. Back in my day, all the jokes were old! Why, some of our jokes were so old that we would just we wouldn't have to tell the whole joke for it
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2)
Not to worry, it's fleet enema time at the ward.
But wait, how do they get them to comply with said enema so easily you ask???
Next time you see a nurse running down the ward hallway with a boom box, that's playing that God awful GNU/RMS tune, and there are whords of old geezers running after her with their Linux powered walkers....
well kids, now you now, and it ain't pretty.
Grumpy middle-aged man wakes up (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, four digits. But then, I did use the Arpanet before the Jan 1982 switchover to TCP/IP, so I am damn old.
Today's man pages look almost the same as 1981 man pages from Bell Labs, so you haven't missed much by being young.
wow... (Score:2)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2)
You may jest, but I've had to resort to this more than a few times, for programs with badly out-of-date man pages... Happily typing along, look up feature "foo", try using the --foo=bar switch, and then wondering why the hell I end up with 206 pages of seemingly-random garbage. Messy (and slow), but 100% effective in figuring out just what "foo" does.
Apropos (no pun intended) of the act
Re:A play on "The Grumpy Man" from SNL (Score:2)
Who cares about the IEEE? (Score:4, Funny)
Ooooh... (Score:2)
However... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:However... (Score:3, Funny)
> man mount
* Do you realise that 10% of all males *
* are GAY? * * * * K-Y-Jelly in K-mart *
* * * * only $9.95!!!1!! * * * * * * * *
NAME
mount - mount a file system
SYNOPSIS
mount [-lhV]
mount -a [-fFnrsvw] [-t vfstype] [-O optlist]
mount [-fnrsvw] [-o options [,...]] device | dir
mount [-fnrsvw] [-t vfstype] [-o options] device dir
etc..
man, that's cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:man, that's cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:man, that's cool! (Score:2)
Woo, thanks for the tip! That's much better.
Re:man, that's cool! (Score:2)
Re:man, that's cool! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, pinfo is definitely better than the default info viewer. The only problem with pinfo is that it's not really standard. If I log on to a system I'm not familiar with (and then I often really _need_ documentation), I can't be sure if "pinfo foo" will work whereas "man foo" will work with almost 100% certainity.
Because it is pretty much guaranteed that man pages can be read o
konqui as a man and info viewer (Score:2)
Typical GNU utility man page... (Score:4, Funny)
"The UNIX man page system sucks. Use the info system instead."
so...
$ info cp
"The UNIX man page system sucks. Use the info system instead."
Re:Typical GNU utility man page... (Score:5, Informative)
I'd suggest everyone load up the funny-manpages and asr-manpages if you're bored.
man lart
Re:Typical GNU utility man page... (Score:2)
No more see info? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No more see info? (Score:2)
If one more.. (Score:2, Funny)
How useful is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are differences between UNIXes and Linux distributions and BSD distributions. What do the POSIX man pages document, and is it more trouble than it is worth to use them as a basis for Linux man pages?
I really don't know, this is not a troll, I didn't even know that there were POSIX man pages.
Re:How useful is this? (Score:5, Informative)
There are no POSIX man pages. But previously they weren't allowed to even quote the POSIX standard in their manpages. They had to rewrite it all and hope they didn't introduce any inaccuracies in their rewriting.
Now they can just quote the standard itself where they want to.
This is mostly important for programming documentation (e.g. "man 3 strerror")
Re:How useful is this? (Score:3, Informative)
Another good one is 'This extension[/odd syntax/whatever] is for compliance which POSIX section aa.bb, which states as follows:'
(purposeful inconsistency.. boredom otherwise)
Re:How useful is this? (Score:2)
Tell me that we also get solved those mistery man pages like "this program does what the program with the same name usually does in other (unspecified) (*nix or something) implementations, with the apropiate random desviations and platform dependent (unspecified) behaviour and programmer non-standard custom surprises"
No? weeell it was too good to be, er... good.
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:5, Interesting)
The syntax for roff just sucks. Info, on the other hand, is a fairly reasonable way to write documentation.
What I like about 'man' (Score:2)
man -t ls
Don't know if this can be done with info?
Re:What I like about 'man' (Score:2)
(Texinfo is several years older than either PDF or HTML. If web browsers had already existed the GNU project probably wouldn't have invented info browsers.)
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Use POD and pod2man (Score:3, Informative)
Use the right tool, don't let the wrong tool use you.
- Barrie
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
I have. The markup used by man ([gnt]roff -man, really) isn't that complicated. If you've ever used a non-WYSIWYG word processor or written your own HTML, throwing together a manpage shouldn't be that difficult to figure out. You should be able to figure out enough to get by just by looking at the system-provided manpages.
XSLT to generate man pages (Score:5, Interesting)
Try using XSLT to generate troff. The CStyleX package will let you generate concise troff macros for GNU style C programming interface man pages (just like the screenshot on this page):
http://www.ioplex.com/~miallen/cstylex/ [ioplex.com]
Actually the best part is that this will also generate HTML from the same source XML. And nothing prevents you from generting PostScript in the future or just about anything else for that matter. IOW you write XML run make and get man pages and HTML.
PS: The package hasn't been updated in a while. The latest man.xsl and ref.xsl transforms are in the libmba package cited on the page referenced.
Re:XSLT to generate man pages (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Two, info has cross-references. A lot of things are easier to read in a format with links, like HTML, which texinfo can output to. Now, this doesn't mean that texinfo is the optimal format, but I think man is certainly *not* the optimal format.
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:3)
I hate to tell you this, but those of us who predate TeX used *roff to write all sorts of things, including my dissertation. Writing elaborate man pages (e.g. with tables) is probably painful for anyone who doesn't already know *roff well, but most man pages require only a handful of macros and no understanding of how to write them or any of the other fine points.
Re:Has anyone here tried to write man pages? (Score:2)
Add in a few whiny, clueless geek justifications for this user-hostile behavior and Linux folks certainly send man
wtf? This wasn't automatic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't promoting standards one of the main reasons for the IEEE consortium's existance? How do you promote standards by not allowing anyone to reprint them?
And the Linux Man Page Project expresses how grateful they feel. Whatever.
Re:wtf? This wasn't automatic? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wtf? This wasn't automatic? (Score:2)
Indeed, and this makes it harder to write man pages to be distributed with free OS. Note that only the Linux project have a license, not everyone elses. Like Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD says : POSIX license [neohapsis.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:wtf? This wasn't automatic? (Score:2)
You can often get hold of free, electronic, copies of standards via university libraries.
Good, (Score:3)
Could this mean... (Score:2, Informative)
What are Man pages? (Score:2, Funny)
Examples..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Examples..... (Score:3, Informative)
I teach System Admin. Had a class this week in fact. Used the man page on crontab to do it, and it included examples right there in the manpage.
POSIX standard onlin (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:POSIX standard onlin (Score:2, Informative)
Download POSIX 2001 [unix.org].
(POSIX 2001 and SUSv3 are the same document.)
Release Notes (man-pages-1.65.Announce) (Score:5, Informative)
(Since this [win.tue.nl] is [unc.edu] not [ibiblio.org] very [tldp.org] informative [win.tue.nl]:)
man pages? (Score:2)
They're doing this 10 years too late (Score:2)
Doing it now, after volunteers have painstakingly written >95% of the man pages from scratch, is almost irrelevant.
GNU info sucks. (Score:2, Troll)
Oh well, I have to agree with you. GNU info sucks.
Re:GNU info sucks. (Score:2)
Re:GNU info sucks. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Why info? (Score:3, Informative)
The info format was created a long time ago.
At that time, HTML didn't yet exist (or, at least, wasn't ubiquitous as it is now), so info made at least some sense (although I've always preferred man pages and n/troff docs myself).
Nowadays, however, it makes no sense at all to continue with info when HTML/XML is so common.
All of the info docs should be translated to HTML or XML and the old, obsolete info format should be
Re: Why info? (Score:2)
Re:Lot's of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
Most developers who would be interested in reading POSIX standards would be comfortable using man pages.
For a better view of man page documentation, try typing man:/traceroute (or your favorite program) in Konqueror, or simply man:/ for man pages index.
Re:Lot's of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
Exactly.
*BLINK* This "you and I" you speak of...figure of speach?
Re:Lot's of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
Re:Lot's of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
Re:Lot's of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
No, not really a joke, I really do think these documentation projects are not "intuitive", and I really do think that this is a flaw.
No big deal, not a reason for a flame war...
Re:Lot's [sic] of truth in the Parent! (Score:2)
The fact is, however, that most people who would refer to them will have no problem at all.
(Nor does a preemptive attempt to avoid a troll rating make it any less a troll.)
Grow Up (Score:2)
Re:Grow Up (Score:2)
In an informal technical discussion, grammar and spelling can often be forgiven if the main point is clear. When the main point is complaining about writing, grammar and spelling become rather relevant to the point.