Re: [patch #4610] Consolidated documentation patch

[Charles Levert]

* On Friday 2005-11-11 at 22:33:11 +0100, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> Charles Levert wrote:
> > * On Friday 2005-11-11 at 15:59:25 +0100, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> > > (Although I don't like to see "Unix" in allcaps.)
> >
> > I wasn't sure about this one.
> >
> >    -- UNIX was the original marketing term
> >    -- The Open Group uses UNIX.
> >    -- Uniformization of typographical conventions
> >    -- Its instigators now spell it Unix.
> >    -- New words tend to simplify over time,
> 
> All that is relevant.  But what counts most IMO is: "Unix" isn't an 
> abbreviation or acronym;

"UNified Information and Computing System",
according to some.

But ok.  Reverted.


> "POSIX" is, "GNU" is,

According to <http://www.gnu.org/>:

   GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not UNIX"

Wait!  There's UNIX!

The GNU manifesto does use Unix.


> "MS" is (sort of),

Microsoft initially had a hyphen in it:  Micro-soft.

The company does qualify for being some sort of
sclerosis.  (That reference may be perceived as
being in bad taste by some.  That's not my intent.)


> >    -- Is public CVS a release (mere publication)?
> 
> No, I don't think so.  Only tarballs officially released by the 
> maintainer.

It just seems strange to have added things in
2005, have them circulating around, but not be
able to claim a copyright privilege for them.

What about Red Hat's wide release of a distribution
with gcc 2.96, which wasn't officially released
by the GNU Project?  Does this mean that the FSF
can't claim any year on it between 2.95 and 3.0?


> > How's this?  We append a parenthesized sentence
> > to each option, so that it's right there when
> > the reader needs it for portability purposes?
> 
> No other man or info page does this, as far as I can see.

Not quite this, but many man pages add a section
at the end explaining the origin of specific
features or of the whole thing.  E.g.:

   HISTORY
          The ftp command appeared in 4.2BSD.

   NOTES
          This is a BSD extension, present in 4.3BSD-Reno.

Also:

   DESCRIPTION
          Throughout  this  manual,  features  of  tcsh  not found in most 
csh(1)
          implementations (specifically, the 4.4BSD csh) are labeled with  
'(+)',
          and features which are present in csh(1) but not usually documented 
are
          labeled with '(u)'.

Also have a look at ps(1) from the procps
package, which support an amalgamation of
features of many different origins.


> And 
> really, if someone plainly wants to write portable scripts, what 
> better to use than the POSIX man pages?

Many users don't even know about them.
It can be nice to document things in one place
so that readers can readily find them.


> The separation may be useful for someone who uses both GNU and Unix 
> greps, but these pages document GNU grep.  Why make things less 
> ordered or more cluttered just to cater a bit for

There would no longer be a separation
or reordering for POSIX.  In many option
descriptions, this short sentence would fit in
the remaining space of the existing last line.

> the other Unices?

Unix is a beast.  Please.  Unixen.   :-)