Preach it, brother

Post #383,673 by pwhysall 11/20/13 3:14:03 AM Reply	Preach it, brother That shit should be tattooed on the inside of the eyelids of every technologist who has to talk to regular people.
Post #383,693 by jake123 11/20/13 6:16:04 PM Reply	You have to find out how to find out before you can find out, and since the best way to find out is `man <whatev>`, that's not easy for most people, since then they've got to figure out where to find out how to find out what they're trying to find out. Most people would have no idea that they need to open a terminal, type in `sudo passwd root` and follow the prompts to get to even the first step in that process, it's not nearly as easy for most people, who panic when presented with `C:\`, let alone `user@host:~$`.
Post #383,695 by boxley 11/20/13 7:00:23 PM Reply	reminds me of a remote hands tech call I answered from my friend's garage back in the day when I did dos support. Didn't understand why my total zero tech buddy was rolling on the floor trying to quietly laugh his ass off when I started giving instructions about cding colons Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #383,703 by pwhysall 11/21/13 1:40:01 AM Reply	When you say "best"... ...you do of course mean "worst". Man pages are the single most awful source of technical information in the universe. Written by sociopaths for sociopaths in a format entirely suitable for 1975, they manage the holy grail of not only imparting no useful information whilst allowing neckbeards to plausibly claim that they do, in fact, contain all the information you need. GNU Info, of course, is the answer. If you're on some particularly potent acid, that is.
Post #383,705 by boxley 11/21/13 9:14:18 AM Reply	gnu info brought to you by people who think emacs is the whizz Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #383,707 by jake123 11/21/13 9:34:23 AM Reply	Well, that's just it they are the best source of info. They're also in the worst format imaginable for people who don't grok those interfaces. They presume a huge knowledge base. While I (who must work on industrial computers that often don't have a video card of any kind) really appreciate them and use them pretty much daily, I'm under no illusions that they are useful in any way to the vast majority of human beings.
Post #383,714 by Ashton 11/21/13 11:29:18 PM Reply	IRLRPD ... magna cum laude Man pages are the single most awful source of technical information in the universe. Thanks Peter, for condensing my litany of gripes through the Ages, so neatly. Which doesn't mean that I disagree with Jake, either.. Once you have grokked to even a mediocre level the syntax, also read/used in detail--at least a few of the common commands (like say, ls and especially rm -r ..oh, say? hda0 Then man Unix will give you the most concise index of properties, switch actions, etc. Shorthand stenographers do not Speak: as they 'condensify'; they transliterate into English. As man Unix Doesn't (-bother even to try.) IMO there Needs to be a man Unix/Verbose included always, wherein Examples are given --and for odd/terse Boolean consequences (where the order of specifying switches can modify in subtle ways, more than one example per /switch. Doubtless there exist many such clueful essays--for the person who knows where to find them, unsubmerged within Google S/Noise infinite detritus. But how much space on a distro would be added, were a simple 'V' inserted in query--got the Verbose version? Hmm? {{Sheesh..}} the 'Manual' for the PDP-8 was even worse! in presuming that a "new user" already Knew a litany of concepts and 'industry' std. jargon: nope, not even a fucking Glossary. I deem such omissions to be a form of smug arrogance--like every kind of clique-speak: Prove you are worthy* of our Attention!*
Post #383,715 by pwhysall 11/22/13 1:32:59 AM 11/22/13 1:36:20 AM Reply	man pages are the poster child for the propensity of the tech world to arrive at a solution that's just not-shitty enough, which is fine; but then to ossify it and, which is far, far worse, going forward - laud it as though it's some kind of techno-triumph. Which is very not fine, because just not-shitty enough is a transient state which doesn't last long. Thirty fucking years, and it's still down to "man -k" to find shit on UNIX systems. Ironically, "shit" is what you tend to find with "man -k". The help on VMS is hardly better, with its tendency to refer to multi-part tape volume archives and other stuff that no-one's done for two decades, but at least you type the word "help" to get it... Edited by pwhysall Nov. 22, 2013, 01:36:20 AM EST Expand All History
Post #383,747 by static 11/24/13 1:22:25 AM Reply	They are a lot like microprocessor handbooks. Only useful if you already know what you're looking for. Or want to (perhaps masochistically) read it from end-to-end. Wade. Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/

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