lsk@fortune.UUCP (Lsk Katz) (10/08/84)
Mon Oct 8 13:02:30 PDT 1984
PLEASE POST PLEASE POST
USENIX 4.2BSD Manuals: Status Report
As announced in the April 1984 issue of ;login: (Vol. 9, No. 2), USENIX
has sponsored the printing of 4.2BSD manuals for 1984 Institutional and Sup-
porting Members of USENIX holding a 4.2BSD source license. A description of
the layout and format of the manuals as well as an order form was included in
the original ;login: announcement, and order forms were sent to all recipients
of the 4.2BSD distribution tapes as well. On July 3rd, after waiting approxi-
mately 30 days for orders to accumulate, the printer was told to reproduce the
following quantities of manuals:
User's Manuals 5,000
Programmer's Manual 5,000
System Manager's Manuals 1,800
It was planned that this quantity of manuals would prove sufficient to
fill all orders generated over the next 3-4 month period. Little did we real-
ize how popular these manuals would prove to be! As of September 10th the
following orders had been received and processed:
User's Manuals 5,900
Programmer's Manuals 4,800
System Manager's Manuals 2,000
Thus the original printing run is completely sold out of the User's and
System Manager's Manuals, and only a few sets of the Programmer's Manuals are
left. We have negotiated with the printer to make another printing run in
order to fill the backlog of outstanding orders and to provide a supply of
manuals for future orders that are received during the next few months. As
stated in the original ;login: announcement, it is uncertain how long manuals
will be available for. If your site is interested in manuals and has not
already ordered, you are encouraged to do so promply. An order form may be
requested from the USENIX office (415-528-8649).
Incidently, we have received many positive comments concerning the new
manual layout and format. Thanks are due Sam Leffler of Lucasfilm and Mike
Karels of the University of California, Berkeley for their hard work at organ-
izing the manual sections and producing the typeset masters for the printer.
John Lassetter, also of Lucasfilm, did the cover design.
------- End of Forwarded Messagemather@uicsl.UUCP (10/14/84)
We have the new manuals here and I think they are GREAT. Small, well organized, thumb indexed. GREAT. I don't get the little devil on the cover. It looks like a character from The Bugs Bunny Show. Inside joke or is it a daemon? b.c.mather software surgeon uiucdcs!uicsl!mather
acheng@uiucdcs.UUCP (10/22/84)
>>/* ---------- "4.2BSD Manual Availability" ---------- */ >> >> Incidently, we have received many positive comments concerning the new >>manual layout and format. Thanks are due Sam Leffler of Lucasfilm and Mike >>Karels of the University of California, Berkeley for their hard work at organ- >>izing the manual sections and producing the typeset masters for the printer. >>John Lassetter, also of Lucasfilm, did the cover design. >> >>------- End of Forwarded Message We have got the new manuals and they are nice. Smaller and easier to handle. But i would like to suggest 2 changes (too late?): 1) The "TABLE OF CONTENTS" and "permuted Index" included in the User's Manual--reference Guide" should be also included in the "Programmer's Manual--regerence Guide". Originally, all these sections 1, 2 and 3 are in one thick volume but the new manuals split 2 and 3 from 1. 2) That little "arrow tail" creature is cute but it occupies too much cover space. The titles for each manual are split into 2 halves at the top and bottom of the covers. Since the 4 volumes of the manuals are about the same thickness (that is good), one has to look at the top then the bottom to find out what manual it is. If the cover would be redesigned, how about make sure the titles are together in one spot? As for now, i am thinking to mark each volume with a diff. color pen but can't make up my mind what colors to use. Albert Cheng (ihnp4!uiucdcs!acheng) Dept. of Computer Science Univ. of Illionis
jdb@mordor.UUCP (John Bruner) (10/30/84)
> If the cover would be redesigned, how about make sure the titles > are together in one spot? As for now, i am thinking to mark > each volume with a diff. color pen but can't make up my mind > what colors to use. As a step further in this direction, how about different colors for the plastic binders (comb, spiral, whatever it's called)? Then it would be easier to pick the desired manual out of a stack (or a bookcase) without linear searching through the set until the right one is located. Of course, some of us (like me) are colorblind, but I still think it would be helpful. -- John Bruner (S-1 Project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) MILNET: jdb@mordor.ARPA [jdb@s1-c] (415) 422-0758 UUCP: ...!ucbvax!dual!mordor!jdb ...!decvax!decwrl!mordor!jdb
dan@rna.UUCP (Dan Ts'o) (10/31/84)
/***** rna:net.unix / rnb!dan / 11:57 am Oct 31, 1984*/ Hi, I think the manuals are great too. But I haven't seen any mention of the omissions (i.e. missing pages). If a new printing is to be done, the missing pages as well as the errors should be fixed. At least in the copies I have received the first page of grep(1) and mkdir(1) are missing. There may be others, but I haven't thoroughly looked. I also agree that some sort of title or other marker on the binding is required as it is very difficult to distinguish one manual from another. Cheers, Dan /* ---------- */
liberte@uiucdcs.UUCP (11/05/84)
ls(1) is out of order. I would recommend sorting the section three pages by name first and then subsection rather than the other way around. Or at least put 3C between 3 and 3F. Some "edge of page" marking should be done to the supplementary documents as in the reference guides. At least mark major sections: Languages, General Reference, etc. I dont even use these manuals because it takes too long to find anything. Daniel LaLiberte ihnp4!uiucdcs!liberte University of Illinois
thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (11/08/84)
In article <39300022@uiucdcs.UUCP> liberte@uiucdcs.UUCP writes: >Some "edge of page" marking should be done to the supplementary documents as >in the reference guides. At least mark major sections: Languages, General >Reference, etc. I dont even use these manuals because it takes too long to >find anything. > The first thing I did when I got my manuals was to take some stick-on colored "dots" (3/4 inch, I think) and bend one around the edge of the first page of each document. With careful spacing, I was able to get 10 locations, thus making translation from the number in the TOC to the document location easy. I did find a couple of numbering glitches (one left out, and, in another manual, one duplicated). I used different color dots for each of the manual types (user, programmer, sys admin), and also stuck the same color dots on the binding (making it easy to pull the correct one from the shelf). =Spencer