Andrew Kelly wrote:
On Tue, 2007-10-30 at 15:13 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
Dave Burns wrote:
On 10/30/07, Karl Larsen <k5di@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I printed out Maximum RPM in 1997 and I refer to it often. I was
told today to use:
# rpm -q --whatprovides (complete direction to a file) and it did
provide the name of the file that provides /etc/rc.d/init.d/nvideo.
Then just now I got to page 51 and there it listed this capability.
I have had this capability for 8 years but didn't know it...
:-)
If you learn to read man pages you don't need so many books. They are a
lot faster to read, too.
But a lot less convenient on the bus (train, plane, toilet, in the park
near the lake, on the couch during commercials, in the waiting room at
the doctor's office, etc and so forth). And they just aren't as bloody
"sexy" as a nicely printed book, are they? :-)
If you carry a laptop, you can have them all much more portably than a
big stack of paper books and easier to search.
And, as this list and certain of its members have indeed quite recently
shown, not every man page is written in a way that Joe Lunchbox can
readily assimilate. Heck, let's be blunt here. Some of them are
remarkably poorly written.
That's why I said 'learn to read' them. It wasn't an insult - it isn't
easy. They all assume that you already know everything the shell will
do to your commands before the program in question even starts; many
assume you already know what a lot of other man pages say. But once you
do know those things you don't want to read them again every time.
That said, I'm not in complete disagreement with you, Les. RTFM is even
today completely apropos and should be the mantra of everybody who's
chosen to be part of the Linux experience. But don't knock a book,
Maestro. It kind of pisses us scribblers off.
Tutorial styles are OK but you only need them once. After you know
_what_ a program does you want a concise reference instead. Books
should split the sections so you don't have to wade through pages and
pages of tutorial when all you want to find is one option setting.
Andy
(Every try to loan a great man page to a friend?)
Better to be even more concise there and give them the one line command
they are looking for.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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