16 Sep
2019
16 Sep
'19
10:16 p.m.
Larry McVoy writes:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 11:14:25AM -0400, Richard Salz
wrote:
Well, in the shameless department, I can quote from my book:
Mucking up the ecosystem into which you release code does not
add value. Many developers behave as if they’re stereotypical
Americans vacationing in another country, or for that matter my
father-in-law visiting — the “I just came to your place, so do
things my way” attitude.
For example, UNIX systems have a command that displays manual pages
for programs. You can type man foo and it’ll show you the page
for the foo command. There’s also a convention that really complex
commands, such as yacc , have both a manual page and a longer, more
in-depth document that describes the program in more detail. When
the GNU project (which I’ll discuss shortly) added commands to
UNIX, it used its own texinfo system for manuals, which wasn’t
compatible with the man system. The result was that users would have
to try both the man and info commands to find documentation. Even
if, as some believe, the GNU approach was superior, any possible
benefits were outweighed by the UNIX community’s huge loss of
productivity that resulted from the fragmented ecosystem.
Is it any surprise that the early GNU effort was
really trying to recreate
ITS? Can you really blame them? I'm grateful that they made `info` be a
standalone program. Putting the concept of "cursor position" into the
existing pagers (more/less/etc) and doing jump/xref/back would be more than
a stretch, IMO.
It's what Clem said. You should acclimate yourself to your environment.
Pushing info into man environment is a lot like being an immigrant and
wanting to bring your laws into your new homeland. That isn't a thing
and shouldn't be a thing. Doesn't matter that people think ITS is better,
they are in Unix. If you think ITS is better, go live there.
When in Rome....