From: eric@tantalus.dell.com (Eric Youngdale) Subject: Re: Stabilizing Linux Date: 12 Aug 1992 14:33:47 GMT
In article <1992Aug12.124749.17219@engr.uark.edu> tep@engr.uark.edu writes:
>dje@sspiff.ampr.ab.ca (Doug Evans) writes:
>
>>davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) writes:
>>For example, I can buy a whole suite of manuals on SVR4/386 from Prentice Hall
>>for about $300. Yes yes, that's pretty steep, but what are the realistic
>>alternatives?
>>
>>Suppose Linux was heading to where SVR4/386 already is: most of our manuals
>>would already be written for us. And we would rarely have to cope with Linux
>
>Plagiarism.
No, you miss the point. I think that the idea was that we could simply
tell people to go down to their local technical bookstore, and tell them to buy
the SVR4/386 manual set. The users manual might be OK, but we need to remember
that we are using mostly GNU replacements, and this means that there are
additional switches and features which would not be in the SVR4 manuals.
The system administrators manual for SVR4 is useless as far as linux is
concerned.
There is a linux manpage project that someone is coordinating. I do
not know the status of it, but perhaps someone involved would care to fill us
in on the status. I would be interested in seeing a list of which utilities
they have man pages for.
This could be the beginning of a linux manual. My feeling is that
a collection of man pages is a very poor substitute for a real manual, but
the main advantage is that there is very little writing required to get
something publishable.