bjorns@kuling.UUCP (Bjorn Sjoholm) (10/18/85)
For about 6 months I worked with a VAX/VMS-system (first
version 3.7 later 4.1).
One of the (few) things I really liked about the environment,
was the HELP-system. It is really very user-friendly and it's
easy as privileged to add information to the libraries.
Does anyone have a similar system running on UNIX?
--
Bjorn Sjoholm, Computer Science, University of Uppsala, Sweden
uucp: bjorns@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!bjorns)savage@ssc-vax.UUCP (Lowell Savage) (10/22/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MICRO--PLEASE *** > For about 6 months I worked with a VAX/VMS-system (first > version 3.7 later 4.1). > > One of the (few) things I really liked about the environment, > was the HELP-system. It is really very user-friendly and it's > easy as privileged to add information to the libraries. > > Does anyone have a similar system running on UNIX? > > Bjorn Sjoholm, Computer Science, University of Uppsala, Sweden Perhaps what might be a little bit more widely desired...has anyone set up the man system so that several directories can contain man pages? I realize that there are 8 sections (and on some systems more) of man pages. However, there are occasionally applications where it would be nice to set up another directory with a bunch of man pages (all sections) that are for some specialized application. Also, as mentioned by Bjorn, it would be easier for Joe User to add and maintain his own man pages for his group to use when just that group will be using the application being documented. All of this without needing to go through the already overworked(? (-:) SA and without fear of wiping out other man pages. As for formatting the man pages like the help files in VMS...I'm afraid that there is already too much overhead invested in the UNIX man system to manage a reformat. VMS tends to have many short pages arranged heirarchically with very few at the top, while UNIX tends to have a smaller number of long pages arranged laterally. Changing just the (relatively) small amount of standard UNIX documentation to work well in the HELP approach would be a large task in itself, but then comes all the other application program documentation. The UNIX man program works quite well with minimal standardization--the VMS HELP system really needs a very rigorous release and configuration control system to make it work well. Please note: By suggesting separate directories for man pages, I am not advocating that every little file-transfer program, graphics filter, or text-processing program have it's own little subdirectory dedicated to it. What I am thinking of is for a system that has a large number of tools for some specific application which more-or-less come in a package. As an example-the tools in the University of Washington VLSI Consortium contain with a man program that searches three directories: /usr/bin/man (the usual), ~cad/man (man subdirectory in the home directory of the "cad" user), and $UW_VLSI_MAN/man (man subdirectory of the directory specified in the $UW_VLSI_MAN environment variable). But again, it is tied to these directories. Since we had the source for this program, I modified the man program to follow a $MANPATH environment variable (which looks just like the PATH variable) but I'm wondering if anyone else has done anything like this? Or has any better ideas??? There's more than one way to be savage Lowell Savage
seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy) (10/22/85)
[ people wanting help programs and more flexible man pages on UNIX ] See "Documenting UNIX: Beyond Manpages" by Shatten and Hecker, in the Summer '85 USENIX Proceedings. Snoopy tektronix!tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (10/23/85)
$MANPATH sounds like a good idea! Incidentally, some UNIX vendors (H-P comes to mind) have developed nice on-line "help" systems. The PWB "help" facility (part of UNIX System V) is pretty primitive, but it can be made to serve until something better comes along.
wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok) (10/23/85)
One small change in man would move things a long way in the right direction.
When the man command is given with no arguments, rather than (or as well
as) the Usage: message it should print a list of the keywords on which man
info is available.
In addition,
man -n
where n is a section number, would print out the list of keywords available
in that section.
With this modification one would be much better equipped to browse through
the manual and perhaps see what interesting local commands are available.
Sure, one could get this info by browsing through /usr/man/*, but a beginner
shouldn't be expected to know that. Neither should one count on that the
manual info always be present there.
--
Bill Sebok Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,philabs,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wlstweten@AMES-NAS.ARPA (10/24/85)
From: savage@ssc-vax.UUCP (Lowell Savage) I modified the man program to follow a $MANPATH environment variable (which looks just like the PATH variable) but I'm wondering if anyone else has done anything like this? Or has any better ideas??? System V.2 UTS on our Amdahls has Man, which makes use of an environment variable named $MAN, to accomplish exactly what you describe.
lasse@daab.UUCP (Lars Hammarstrand) (10/26/85)
In article <1578@hammer.UUCP> seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy) writes: > >[ people wanting help programs and more flexible man pages on UNIX ] > >See "Documenting UNIX: Beyond Manpages" by Shatten and Hecker, >in the Summer '85 USENIX Proceedings. > Yes?!, but what does it say?