Hi, On 7/22/22 12:35, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
BTW, I think I didn't reply (or if I did was very short) to your comment that other languages may find it difficult to mirror our use of subsections, since their main section is already a subsection (e.g., 3pl). I'd say that since C is the native Unix language, and others are just... others?, I'd optimize for C, and let other languages find a way to document their things. It would be easy to say just go away, the man pages are for C, but I won't dare to say that, since I like man pages, and I'd like to see more documentation for languages that I sometimes have to use be in the form of man pages, so I'll try to come up with a more imaginative answer: how about using subsubsections of the form 3pl_type? At least it's a possibility. man(1) would handle them as any other subsection, but that's not a big problem. Maybe man(1) could develop a way to provide subsubsections... Colin, any ideas in this regard?
Or, maybe it's the time to write a whole new volume? I think there's a comparable difference between 3type and 3 than between 2 and 3 or 1 and 8, so it would be merited. I didn't do it before for two reasons: it might break software that assumes than Unix manuals use a single number followed by an optional string (I'd say it's not a fair assumption to say that man9 would be the last one ever used; if there's 9, there might be a 10 some day), and because other projects had already used 3type.
But, that would start a clean namespace. Maybe it's worth it.How would you feel if I inaugurate man10 for types, and later man11 for non-function-like macros? :D
Cheers, Alex -- Alejandro Colomar <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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