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RTFM = Read the Funny Manual?
coronaride writes: "This article over on Wired discusses the issue near and dear to every sysadmin and support tech's heart. I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?) unless something majorly goes wrong! The article talks about how some countries, including Japan, try to spice up their product manuals in order to entice the users to read them. Is this just too much work for our lazy American manufacturers to do?"
Linux has solved the problem of manual translation....
it doesn't have one!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
By far the best manuals, in my not so humble opinion, are Unix man pages. They tell you EVERYTHING you need to know without fluff.
I'd have to disagree. The UNIX man pages are awful for many if not most tasks.
To start with, "man" is an awful command to access the help system with. Even if you know you want to access the manual, man is a poor choice of command name - why not manual? Why not help?
Leaving that aside, look at the contents. Yes, you're right man lists EVERYTHING about a command. Everything. Its like asking someone the directions to a bar and getting an inch-by-inch description of every steps of the way. There will be the one in a million time when that's what you want. For the rest of humanity its totally inappropriate.
Look at the start of the man entry for rm:
"The rm utility removes the directory entry specified by each file argument. If a file has no write permission and the standard input is a terminal, the full set of permissions (in octal) for the file are printed followed by a question mark. This is a prompt for confirmation. If the answer begins with y (for yes), the file is deleted, otherwise the file remains.
If file is a symbolic link, the link will be removed, but the file or directory to which it refers will not be deleted. Users do not need write permission to remove a symbolic link, provided they have write permissions in the directory."
These are the first two paragraphs of 10 pages of manual. 99.9% of the time I want to remove a file and have it gone. I do not want to know about symbolic links and file permissions set in octal.
The problem with man is that it is totally comprehensive, which means it covers every option no matter how irrelevant. Too much information is just as bad as too little because you won't be able to find the relevant nugget in the sea of obtuse and incomprehensible chatter.
What is needed are task-oriented manuals not reference books. That will cut down the signal-to-noise ratio so that you can actually find the help you need.
Sailing over the event horizon