20 Sep
2023
20 Sep
'23
8:57 p.m.
On Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 2:30 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
that
such an effort wouldn't need to be a "start at page 1 and finish at
page whatever", but could be done piecemeal. Groff would also be a great
candidate due to the preponderance of supporting secondary papers, like the
NROFF/TROFF manual, different macro definitions, etc. That does then get
into the prospect of the secondary papers too, likewise excellent
references to this day on a number of subjects that I personally would love
to have modernized versions of.
the shelf,
I don't see HISTORY in the V10, 4.4BSD, or SVR4 books, so
probably a later invention in the BSD line that didn't get picked up by
other UNIX-likes? Looking at a few illumos manpages, they also don't appear
to have a HISTORY section. They appear to be there on macOS, probably as a
result of the FreeBSD origins of macOS user space. That said, I also
appreciate the HISTORY section, it's tipped me off to things to study that
I didn't know on a few occasions.
4.4BSD almost certainly had some history. All the current BSDs have a
HISTORY section for many of their pages. And we are busy borrowing each
other's primary research for them... though it a man page, not a treatis on
the evolution of signals since V7. Nor do the vast majority of command line
flags have mention. Those that do are either 4BSD vs System V or XXXBSD vs
Linux (and maybe a few FooBSD vs BarBSD, but those are rare).
Warner
I'd start with groff.
So I'm a little off topic but if people wanted to work on that, I'd be
up for that project. It's not as big as what you are saying but it's
pretty big, I think we just start with something, see if we can get
debian/ubuntu to pick it up, lather, rinse repeat. In fact if we
just get the groff project to pick up our stuff, all the distros will
get that eventually.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
That's an excellent point, the beauty of UNIX being a granular system is
Well if anyone catches wind of such a project kicking off in some way
elsewhere,
know that I'm certainly interested in what I can contribute.
What my work towards this eventual goal will probably continue to look like
for now though is just doing my diff analysis of manual versions, as one of
my principle goals there was to identify the apparent last common ancestor
of Research, PWB, and BSD lineages, at least as far as documentation is
concerned. Common sense would just say research V7 but there are little
tidbits here and there between V6 and V7 that don't show up in other
places, just tiny little nuanced things for the most part. I haven't done
this part of the analysis at all but a causal glance at a 32V manual diffed
with a V7 manual reveals some changes that don't appear to be related to
the portability work. But I'm not going to comment on that further without
analysis to back it up, just some anecdotal observations at present.
Why (and when) did GNU drop the HISTORY section
from its man pages?
Adam
Did GNU ever have a HISTORY section? I just plucked a couple books off
- Matt G.
Sorry for the double bump, don't want to lie, just found a few pages in
the 4.4BSD manual with a HISTORY section. Checked the same pages in V10,
SVR4, and 4.3BSD, no dice, so maybe 4.4BSD at the earliest? Of course I
could just grep this but where's the fun in that (and I'm not at a computer
I have a UNIX tree on right now...)