16 Nov
2018
16 Nov
'18
2:43 a.m.
Sorry about the recent post. It may seem peripherally
connected to tuhs, but it got there due to overtrained
fingers (or overaged mind). It was intended for another list.
Doug
16 Nov
16 Nov
4:18 a.m.
New subject: man-page style
As someone whose résumé, the one that got me in the door at Bell Labs, was
formatted with nroff -man, I of course support the clarity and precision
Doug celebrates. I wish the rest of the world agreed, but it doesn't.
Although I hold the editor line for much of the documentation for Go, for
instance, I fend off frequent requests to rewrite and expand. Flab is felt
to be friendlier, much as I (and Doug, who taught me more about writing
than anyone else) would prefer the leaner cuts.
-rob
4:38 a.m.
New subject: man-page style
and it takes a lot less typing.
On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 7:18 PM, Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As someone whose résumé, the one that got me in the
door at Bell Labs, was
formatted with nroff -man, I of course support the clarity and precision
Doug celebrates. I wish the rest of the world agreed, but it doesn't.
Although I hold the editor line for much of the documentation for Go, for
instance, I fend off frequent requests to rewrite and expand. Flab is felt
to be friendlier, much as I (and Doug, who taught me more about writing than
anyone else) would prefer the leaner cuts.
-rob
4:50 a.m.
New subject: man-page style
I have to write and rewrite to try to make things clear and concise.
Certainly worth doing but for some of us it takes a lot more typing
and thinking!
On Nov 15, 2018, at 7:38 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
and it takes a lot less typing.
On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 7:18 PM, Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> As someone whose résumé, the one that got me in the door at Bell Labs, was
> formatted with nroff -man, I of course support the clarity and precision
> Doug celebrates. I wish the rest of the world agreed, but it doesn't.
> Although I hold the editor line for much of the documentation for Go, for
> instance, I fend off frequent requests to rewrite and expand. Flab is felt
> to be friendlier, much as I (and Doug, who taught me more about writing than
> anyone else) would prefer the leaner cuts.
>
> -rob
>
2:29 p.m.
New subject: man-page style
That reminds me of the famous quote (though not famous enough that I recall
who said it!): "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to
make it shorter."
Mike Markowski
On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 10:51 PM Bakul Shah <bakul(a)bitblocks.com> wrote:
I have to write and rewrite to try to make things
clear and concise.
Certainly worth doing but for some of us it takes a lot more typing
and thinking!
2:44 p.m.
New subject: man-page style
That was Pascal. Not C!
On Nov 16, 2018, at 5:29 AM, Mike Markowski
<mike.ab3ap(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That reminds me of the famous quote (though not famous enough that I recall who said
it!): "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it
shorter."
Mike Markowski
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 10:51 PM Bakul Shah <bakul(a)bitblocks.com> wrote:
> I have to write and rewrite to try to make things clear and concise.
> Certainly worth doing but for some of us it takes a lot more typing
> and thinking!
>
3:02 p.m.
New subject: man-page style
Mike Markowski [11/16/18 2:29 PM]:
That reminds me of the famous quote (though not famous
enough that I
recall who said it!): "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have
time to make it shorter."
According to Wikipedia, Blaise Pascal:
"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le
loisir de la faire plus courte."
("I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.")
--
Hilsen Harald
7:38 a.m.
New subject: man-page style
Sorry to hijack this but I gotta. Because I love nroff/troff.
So I was talking to a tech guy at one of the wall street banks, Marc
Donner. I told him about a thing I had done, I called it webroff,
it was a perl script that took roff -ms input and produced a website,
complete with a table of contents, a site map, view a section as a page,
view the whole thing as page, it was pretty cool. Sort of old school in
web styling but super useful. For a long time BitMover's website was
a webroff site. We eventually moved on to a node.js pile of crap and
even the biggest webroff haters at my company admitted that was a mistake.
I was talking to Marc about it and saying how low level it was. Marc had
some insight, he said that roff -ms mostly said what you wanted to do,
not how to do it. That's why I could build the perl script, it was
the macros that made it work.
Roff macros are a lot like device drivers, we have this read/write/etc
view of the world and a shit ton of work gets done to make that world
view be simple but it isn't.
And to go to my love of roff, back in 1998 I was program chair for
a Linux Expo confernce. Which just meant I formatted the proceedings.
LaTex was all the rage but I encouraged roff. The one guy that took
me up on it was "holy crap is this easier than LaTex, I love groff".
Like Git, the wrong answer won, I do think that you all should look
at groff, it's pretty cool, LaTex won but groff is still a thing that
has taken roff forward.
On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 02:18:35PM +1100, Rob Pike wrote:
As someone whose r??sum??, the one that got me in the
door at Bell Labs, was
formatted with nroff -man, I of course support the clarity and precision
Doug celebrates. I wish the rest of the world agreed, but it doesn't.
Although I hold the editor line for much of the documentation for Go, for
instance, I fend off frequent requests to rewrite and expand. Flab is felt
to be friendlier, much as I (and Doug, who taught me more about writing
than anyone else) would prefer the leaner cuts.
-rob
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
2:42 p.m.
New subject: man-page style
On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 1:39 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Marc had some insight, he said that roff -ms mostly
said what you wanted
to do, not how to do it.
Which of course is the basic foundation of Rob's and Brian's "UNIX
philosophy" from their >>still<< ever so relevent book UPE.
These are the core ideas that to me are the basis for a true 'thinking
persons view of computer world' vs. the 'I can do anything view' or vs.
'I
don't care, you can do it for me.' MS Word (Windows philidophy) fron
Redmond tries to tell me what I should want something 'should' look like/do
- *i.e.* hey you user -- just need to 'fill in the blanks' and we will do
everything for you. Which if what you want to do is what they thought of
and what they think is proper can be easy no doubt, but you are screwed if
what you value / desire is just a little different. LaTex and friends
(VMS from the OS standpoint) strive to solve that by make everything
possible so it can be as 'pretty' as possible.
We were recently discussing Oster's new book and his term about 'deep
interfaces.' To me the message of UPE (and the roff family) is simple:
I've thought about what I want: i.e. Computer do what want you to do for me,
not what you think I should do or make me work so hard to get what I want
done, that is not worth the trouble. Then make *that simple* for me to
describe to the computer and the complex part, be *handled by the system
doing the work*, but the work should not be so 'hidden' that I as the user
of the system, can not describe something different than what you (the
system programmer) think I need to do or may be so complex for you as the
system implementor to do for me.
Clem
ᐧ
8:05 p.m.
New subject: man-page style
On 15/11/2018, Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Sorry about the recent post. It may seem peripherally
connected to tuhs, but it got there due to overtrained
fingers (or overaged mind). It was intended for another list.
Nevertheless, the post was delightful.
N.
Doug
2193
days inactive
2193
days old
9 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Bakul Shah -
Clem Cole -
Doug McIlroy -
Harald Arnesen -
Ken Thompson -
Larry McVoy -
Mike Markowski -
Nemo -
Rob Pike