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

Why (and when) did GNU drop the HISTORY section from its man pages? Adam

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. 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. 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. 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...)

One of the projects I thought I'd do in my retirement, but haven't done, was to provide man page / paper as in "a paper", not tree paper, versions of all the GNU info stuff. I could not be less thrilled with info, yeah there are ways to deal, but it just isn't as good (to me) as how Unix did docs. It's like they want to force emacs on us to read docs. 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. The one drawback I see is people might want to provide info and man docs. My personal preference is that the info stuff goes away but I have learned I don't get what I want. So there may be a period of time where both need to be maintained. On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 08:32:15PM +0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote: might as well start putting feelers out since my Dragon Quest project is starting to slow down and I might focus back on UNIX manual stuff. folks' libraries is a nice, modern paper UNIX manual that takes the past few decades into consideration. The GNU project, BSDs, etc. ship manpages of course, and there's the POSIX manpages, but I'm a sucker for a good print manual. Something I'm thinking of producing as a "deliverable" of sorts from my documentation research is a new-age UNIX manual, derived as closely as possible from the formal UNIX documentation lineages (so Research, SysV, and BSD pages), but: history and some notes about current implementations, if applicable. This would include notes about "dead on the vine" stuff like things plucked from the CB-UNIX, MERT/PG, and PWB lines. The history part could even be a separate book, that way the manual itself could stay tight and focused. This would also be a good place for luminaries to provide reflections on their involvement in given pieces. landscape of producing such a thing would entail. At the very least, to actually call it a UNIX Programmer's Manual, it would probably need to pass some sort of compliance with the materials The Open Group publishes. That said, the ownership of the IP as opposed to the trademarks is a little less certain, so I would be a bit curious who all would be involved in specifically getting copyright approval to publish anything that happened the commercial line after the early 80s, so like new text produced after 1982. I presume anything covered by the Caldera license at least could be published at-cost, but not for a profit (which I'm not looking for anyway.) information and make sure folks who wrote stuff up over time are properly credited, if not on each page ala OWNER at least in a Acknowledgements section in the front. of different cover styles, comb bound, maybe one echoing the original Bell Laboratories UNIX User's Manual-style cover complete with Bell logo, another using the original USENIX Beastie cover, etc. but that also then calls into question more copyrights to coordinate, especially with the way the Bell logo is currently owned, that could get complicated. such a project going in earnest, would folks find themselves interested in such a publication? In any case I do intend to start on a typesetter sources version of this project sometime in the next year or so, but ideally I would want it to blossom into something that could result in some physical media. This idea isn't even half-baked yet by the way, so just know I don't have a roadmap in place, it's just something I see being a cool potential project over the coming years. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

Yeah, I'm less angry at GNU now--I didn't search as hard, but when I found out 4.3BSD didn't have HISTORY (and neither does 2.11BSD, which is still actively-ish maintained) then I figured it wasn't something classical that GNU dropped, just never imported. I feel like it existed on SunOS and Solaris but I might be wrong about that? Was it really FreeBSD that introduced it? Adam

I don't think SunOS had it. The SunOS man pages were pretty terse, the powers that be wanted just the facts. I remember get beat up for putting examples in some of the man pages I wrote, they got taken out "because examples are for user guides, man pages are not user guides, they are a reference guide" or something like that. I like examples in man pages, I think it jump starts you into using the program more easily but maybe that's just me. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023, Larry McVoy wrote: [...] No, it's not just you :-) -- Dave

On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 07:25:13PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: found that I don't think SunOS had it. The SunOS man pages were pretty terse, the powers that be wanted just the facts. I remember get beat up for putting examples in some of the man pages I wrote, they got taken out "because examples are for user guides, man pages are not user guides, they are a reference guide" or something like that. I like examples in man pages, I think it jump starts you into using the program more easily but maybe that's just me. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

That's it, isn't it? Man pages are great if you a) already know the name of the program you want (c'mon, apropos/man -k have never really worked that well),

But they aren't great for either exploration or discoverability.

Say what you will about VMS, its HELP functionality makes it much easier to go from "I want to do X" to "And here's a sequence of commands that will do X" when you don't already have a good mental model of what's on the system.

On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 07:25:13PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: I don't think SunOS had it. The SunOS man pages were pretty terse, the powers that be wanted just the facts. I remember get beat up for putting examples in some of the man pages I wrote, they got taken out "because examples are for user guides, man pages are not user guides, they are a reference guide" or something like that.

One of the projects I thought I'd do in my retirement, but haven't done, was to provide man page / paper as in "a paper", not tree paper, versions of all the GNU info stuff. I could not be less thrilled with info, yeah there are ways to deal, but it just isn't as good (to me) as how Unix did docs. It's like they want to force emacs on us to read docs. 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.

The one drawback I see is people might want to provide info and man docs. My personal preference is that the info stuff goes away but I have learned I don't get what I want. So there may be a period of time where both need to be maintained.

Why (and when) did GNU drop the HISTORY section from its man pages?

My NetBSD section 8 was two long printed book volumes. 68 printed pages 1461 through 1529 had 109 different licences (no duplicate verbiage) and corresponding copyrights and required acknowledgement statements. The permuted index was also 68 pages long. The books will be several volumes long and likely ten thousand of pages. (Not very many sold, it was large learning project.)