It's a tricky barrier.
Unix man pages do represent a conundrum, I'll freely admit that. On the one hand, they will usually get used by people who need reminding about something, or just need a bit more information about an otherwise familar tool. This explains why they're written that way. On the other hand, this makes them difficult to use if you are not familiar with this philosophy. In fact, it can make merely learning a new tool difficult, even if you are familiar with how man pages often work. On the gripping hand, providing some sort of introductory version for that task merely postpones when they will read the "real" man page, probably also postponing the actual problem of understanding their purpose. :-/ On the fourth (!) hand, some sort of universal introduction-to-Unix-concepts wouldn't go all that astray. Migration documents usually do that job (e.g. Unix for DOS users) fairly well.
Wade.
