[TUHS] man-page style

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 1:40 PM Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:

> Thanks Doug for accidentally starting this thread :-)
>
+1


> I feel like the GNU project is responsible for destroying the usefulness of
> man pages with their "info" stuff.
>
Come on Jon - don't you live in emacs all day long ;-)  .. sigh....


>  I'll make the claim that the loss of the "do one thing and do it well
> ..."

Actually I blame the VAX and larger address spaces for much of that and no
enough real teaching of what I refer to as 'good taste.'   When you had to
think about keeping it small and decomposable, you did.   My own sisters
and brothers at UCB started us down this path I fear.

Truth is, it is a tough call, learning when 'good enough' is all you need.
 When its easy to add to things to something you have, you get GNU (or cat
-v as Rob pointed out years ago or my least favorite - sendmail - there is
>>no<< reason why SMTPD was part of sendmail as an example).

I've meantion before on this list, the day I showed Dennis that fact that
the System V boot system was larger than the 6th edition kernel, you knew
we had a problem.   The argument of course is - "well look how well it
works and I can do this X" -- sorry not good enough.

In the late 70s, Mashy had a wonderful ACM lecture called 'Small is
Beautiful' and he had some excellent pictures that demonstrated the problem
visually.   I love to see him resurect that talk and try to get 'modern'
programmers try to understand his message.

That said, I admit I do like many things on my moderm MBP and I would not
want to go back to running 6th Edition, but I swear there is a happy ground
somewhere in between.

Clem
ᐧ
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