A nice property of "section" is that it's recursive--applies to any level of a hierarchy--so you don't have to struggle to keep level-specific terminology straight. Doug On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 2:21 PM Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi Michael, > > On 12/11/22 20:05, Michael Haardt wrote: > > I just checked what is easily available to me: > > > v7 calls them sections in intro pages, but chapters in man(1) and man(7). > > > > Celerity Computing UNIX (looks like a BSD port) calls them sections in > > intro pages and man(7), but chapter in manv(7) (dtroff version of man(7)). > > > > SunOS 4.1.1 calls them sections everywhere. > > > > HP-UX 11.11 calls them sections everywhere. > > Thanks for checking! > > > > > Given the changes it looks like you are not the first person to note an > > inconsistency here, but I see a majority calling them sections and > > getting rid of the term chapter over time. > > It seems like a regression to me. The old term was, at least in terms of > ambiguity, better. > > Do we need to fix a decades-old regression in the manual pages? Well, _need_ is > a strong word for that. > > > > > Now all of the above is commercially obsolete by now and Linux > > dominates, but I don't see a good reason to break an established term > > and instead suggest to follow the above and s/chapter/section/g. > > Admittedly, it's hard to defend my proposal as _necessary_. Especially after > the world has lived for decades with the ambiguity of having chapters as > sections and sections also as... sections. > > I have several times had to come up with imaginative ways to disambiguate the > term section. Am I a corner case that has to live with that ambiguity way more > than the average programmer? Quite likely. > > Since I'll some day (likely for 6.02, that's 2 years from now) be publishing the > Linux man-pages as a single-volume PDF, the term chapter will regain significance. > > IMO, there's undoubtedly a reason to fix the regression, and reform the old > term. However, the reason is not very strong, so it all depends on reaching an > agreement with all of man-db, mandoc(1), and groff(1). That would probably have > the side-effect that we also have agreement with OpenBSD. That would be a large > subset of the relevant parties. > > Cheers, > > Alex > > -- > <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
