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Man Page Project Can Now Use Official POSIX Docs
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."
I love my man! 3
real *nix users dont need man pages!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
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!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Do they have SCO's permission?
So now they are going to be packed with even more manly goodness?
In return for the free content, all man pages will be required to incorporate ascii-art banner ads.
(Ahem.) I like man chiefly because the default (command-line) browser program doesn't suck quite so much. I'm sure there are technically superior ways to store documentation, but man is very readable. info, on the other hand, blows.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
$ man cp
"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."
Does this mean no more cruel messages telling us to see the info pages?
Look out!
If one more Slashbot makes a "DO U HAVE SCO'S PERMISSION? LOL" reference, I will touch your junk liberally.
Now if only GNU software would stop forcing that damnable alternative "info" ( which makes about as much sense as women ) down everyone's throath, things would be nice and happy.
Hate me!
Most man pages have long since been written from scratch for Linux. It would seem that any man pages still missing must be pretty rarely used, or for obsolete commands.
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.
Infuriate left and right
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I see a lot of people bitching about how info sucks. Well, you know what? Maybe it does. But have you actually tried to write a man page?
The syntax for roff just sucks. Info, on the other hand, is a fairly reasonable way to write documentation.
Damn, the GNU-gestapo modded you flamebait already.
Oh well, I have to agree with you. GNU info sucks.
My other first post is car post.
This is obviously a good thing to do for the Open Group. I wonder, though, why they say they grant the permission to the Linux Man Page Project. Their documents are freely redistributable anyway, so this in effect gives the content away.
Many Linux man pages were already direct or very close copies, any the BSD man pages are also very close. And why wouldn't they? The content is quite formulaic and there is not much space for exploring language creativity, it's technical documentation after all.
The most interesting point of this story is that the entire planet wasn't given permission to reprint the posix standard from day one. It's a standard isn't it?
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.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Does that mean well get some docs on the pthreads rwlocks and posix semaphores ? Just yesterday I needed them, and sadly discovered they were missing ,(
You can generate postscript output for printing like this for example:
man -t ls
Don't know if this can be done with info?
I don't understand what these "Man" pages are? Is this some sort or web pages of porn for women, is it gay? Is this trendy? Should I "like" or "groove" on "Man" pages?
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
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.
Exactly.
*BLINK* This "you and I" you speak of...figure of speach?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Use the right tool, don't let the wrong tool use you.
- Barrie
How would the 650 page GCC manual look as a man page?
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.
-- Alastair
I find the lack of examples in man pages to be a real pain....Example take a look at the crontab manual, it would be nice to see how to formulate an example to place into the crontabs. You'll find such things in Solaris.
Maybe this screws SCO and their hope to cash in on #DEFINE's?
So this is an eletist project. As I thought. This is one of many of the reasons Linux will never win against M$, the "Linux Attitude".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The syntax for roff just sucks.
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/
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.
I can understand how someone who is so illiterate as to put an apostrophe in "lots" might have trouble reading man pages.
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.)
-- Alastair
I couldn't find it spelled out just what the license terms (if any?) would be. Not to be paranoid, but if the license isn't sufficiently liberal, this has the potential to be a trap.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If I invalidated arguments here at Slashdot based on grammar and spelling (there, their, they're), there would not be much left to read. Grow up.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
Er...joke?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I'll have to stop into [IEEE President] Dr Chang's office and thank him on behalf of slashdot (he's the CS department chair where i go to school)
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
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...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You *are* pretty old for someone with a 4-digit uid! :)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
(Since this is not very informative:)
man pages for Linux? Next thing you know, Beastie will be ice skating...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Or just use "info:whatever" in Konqueror. Even doing "info:" will show you an index of Info pages. You can do the same trick with man pages: "man:whatever".
Is it ok for women to use? They never said.
Perhaps this was something to do with the format itself, but IIRC the plain old info command didn't do that. Actually, hold on...
Be careful! New moon tonight.
Never read it, nor thought ever to, but I guess all the more power to them...
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
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 abandoned.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
BTW, many, many utilities exist for translating info docs into HTML.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
If IEEE had made this POSIX documentation freely available 10 years ago, that would have helped the free software community a lot.
Doing it now, after volunteers have painstakingly written >95% of the man pages from scratch, is almost irrelevant.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Come on...
:)
Where are the early-warning trolls?
Cheerz,
jason
THSsMCHshrtrTHN160chrs -- And I don't even like to SMS!
I still lovingly remember the entire collection of MIPS documentation that came with my Magnum and R3200 systems. The 'man' 'manual' was about 5 inches thick, and the 7 others were hefty too, but the biggest stack of all were the updates and inserts.
;)
i never did get around to 'merging' all that into one big doc system before i (stupidly) threw it all out in the 90's, but if i had i would probably be very proud of that Unix Documentation Collection...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
How are the two document bases (GNU man documents vs. POSIX man documents) going to be integrated?
BTW I hope this also applies to xBSD and any other free OS, and I hope it marks the beginning of a trend towards standards being free and open, but somehow I think not, because the standards bodies have not yet devised an alternative way of funding their work.
Sad, but the cost of acquiring lots of standards, in order to be able to do essential work, really damages small to medium buisnesses, whereas the big boys nuy one copy and distribute it, usually illegally, on their intranet.
BTW I am all for standards compliance, it is best for everyone, but first there has to be a standard, and then it has to be properly documented and published with full disclosure, by a competent standards organisation, or it is worthless, like the slogan "We set the standard" which IIRC originated some years ago from the vile, later to be convicted, Monopolist. Standard? Windoze? I think not, more like a randomly drifting set of obscure, inaccurately documented, and convoluted APIs which may change at any time without prior warning.
There are still some things I miss when using html documentation that I appreciate in info:
--Bruce Fields
Galeon supports mouse gestures for this. Left-down is previous, right-down is next, and up-left-right-up is table of contents. These gestures use link rel tags, if present.
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
Hmm. And I just noticed mozilla will use the link rel tags too (view->show/hide->site navigation bar), though I can't seem to find keyboard shortcuts. Also I can't figure out whether lynx does this.
--Bruce Fields
But the man pages *are* written for people who already know the material. Man pages are *reference* -- you already know how to use select(), fstab, or what-have-you but just want to check the parameter list, valid modifiers, etc.
/. mainstream, they're branded for being rude and/or whiney about it :-(
If you want to learn how to use something, you go to the how-to, or the guide, or a tutorial on the Web. That's what they're for.
And please ease on the attitude. Contrary to popular belief, people aren't branded as trolls for having opinions contrary to
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.