🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <279@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM>, kleonard@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM (Ken Leonard) writes:
> and with *NIX, if I want to know how to send e-mail, I look up the -man- page,
> for -mail-

OK...

> which is prob'ly online

Online manuals. Given that having online manuals is an innovation other
systems don't afford you, why complain about...

> but may be preformatted for some terminal
> type other than what I'm logged-in on,

I've never actually seen manual pages formatted for a terminal. They're
formatted for a line printer, but all the backspacing and overstriking
should have been handled by more(1). It has been on every system I've
used.

Also, support for multiple terminal types is another UNIX exclusive...

> unless I need to know how to put
> together an address to get the mail to someone in a strange place,

How many systems even support email to "a strange place"? If it's on
another system, how do you expect the *UNIX* manuals to explain it?

> and then all I have to do is remember that a bang-sign imbedded in the middle
> of an address string is _still_ taken as a -history- reference by the shell...

Now that's the first valid gripe I've even seen. This has been fixed in
the current version of the cshell:

	set histchars='#^'

changes the ! to #. This is hardly a problem with the *manuals* though.

[I said...]
> * Not that other proprietary systems are much better.

> no, but they are usually somewhere close to consistent from one installation
> to the next, unless of course we're talking about 3083s vs. 3090s, or
> 1100-xx vs. 1100-yy :-)

I don't understand this. I have here or at home the following manuals:

	Version 7 (Tektronix)
	System III
	Berkeley 3BSD
	Xenix System III
	System V, pre release 3.
	SVID
	System V.3.2

Apart from the SVID, all of them have the same chapter organisation. I have
in a pinch used about any of them as a reference for problems in just about
any UNIX system you can name. The consistency, given the number of
organisations that have pawed through them, is remarkable. I certainly
don't find my RMX-11 manuals useful when dealing with VAX/VMS, even though
both use the same command language.

[ I said: ]
> * So the UNIX User's Manual isn't a tutorial... big deal. It's one of the best
> * *reference* manuals in the business.
> well, see above

Ditto.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "A char, a short int, and
Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.   `-_-' |  an int bit-field were walking
Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today?  'U`  |  through the forest..."