My greatest "AH HA!" moment reading man pages was when I discovered I could search for terms within man pages by hitting /<search term> or /"search term" when it had spaces.<br><br>And yes, release notes should be merged into the man pages as a "current version" section. I recently spent many days trying in vain to get a particular aplications client libraries to compile. Total fail. Turns out there was a blurb in a .2 version release notes that briefly pointed out the client libs were merged into the server libs and not needed as a stand-alone anymore. Since entire application had various version numbers for the different pieces, I had grabbed the latest of each. <br>
<br>at least there _were_ release notes!<br><br>eons ago (before SuSE drank the kool-aide and open-sourced their installer) I was tinkering with a SuSE installation issue. They had no release notes on their installer. They had notes on the distro but their installer was a black box. And it was failing to run on my chipset (that was about 2 years old so it should have been supported). End result is RedHat installed nicely and their notes on their installer covered the chipset initialization failure and provided a workaround (don't ask. It was like RedHat 4.2 era). Thusly, I wound up firmly in the RedHat camp since their output was more professional and robust and informative and open. And unlike the Debian installs at the time (which always worked - BTW) did not require that I know memory address space values (in hex of course) in order to accept a configuration during installtion. Granted, if I just hit "OK" on everything it all worked but it felt like a dead vertical learning curve while carrying a load of lead bricks by a cord in my teeth while climbing a greased rope that was on fire.<br>
<br>And from that was born Ubuntu.... :D<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:34 AM, Paul Cartwright <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ale@pcartwright.com">ale@pcartwright.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">On Wed July 7 2010, Jim Philips wrote:<br>
> The problem with RTFM is the assumption that the fine manual was well<br>
> written in the first place. I have been using Linux since 1995 and I have<br>
> always felt that the man pages were written in exceptionally poor fashion.<br>
> The immediate underlying assumption is that you need to know about<br>
> *everything* and that most basic functions of a command are beside the<br>
> point. The man page for grep is an excellent example. They never go<br>
> straight to the point. The high use examples are always buried somewhere<br>
> that you would least be likely to look for them. The "F" in RTFM is not at<br>
> all deserved. How can I find a file containing "x" in my home directory?<br>
> The question will only be answered in the most convoluted way.<br>
<br>
</div>I forget the man page I was looking for once, but the option I was looking for<br>
was somewhere in 3,000 lines of gobbledegook, and I couldn't find it.. some<br>
of those man pages are just totally outrageous! This App I used to install<br>
came out with a new version, and it didn't install right. I read the<br>
installation guide backwards & forwards, with no help. I finally asked<br>
the "GURU" and he said " oh, that option is listed in the release-notes!!<br>
<div class="im"><br>
<br>
--<br>
Paul Cartwright<br>
Registered Linux user # 367800<br>
Registered Ubuntu User #12459<br>
<a href="http://usdebtclock.org/" target="_blank">http://usdebtclock.org/</a><br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br>Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness <br>Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits <br><br> Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.<br>
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992 <br><br>