ted@eslvcr.wimsey.bc.ca (Ted Powell) (09/29/90)
In article <1990Sep25.160828.10694@iguana.uucp> merce@iguana.uucp (Jim Mercer) writes: >In article <1990Sep23.145904.18199@uhura.neoucom.EDU> wtm@uhura.neoucom.EDU (Bill Mayhew) writes: >>That leads me to one gripe. You'd think that AT&T could at least >>include the nroff part of DWB as part of the full Unix system. Not >>being able to format and print man pages is ridiculous. Expecting > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >man pages? what man pages? >AT&T Sys V 3.2.[012] are not distributed with man pages. >that's another $10K What man pages? Presumably the same man pages they had in mind when they made deroff(1) part of the Foundation Set. I believe that most readers of this article will be aware of a number of legitimate sources, the most obvious being internally generated documentation. The price of man pages for the system is not in itself a valid argument, any more than the fact that most mail is internally generated (rather than being supplied by AT&T) is an argument against providing mailx(1). -- ted@eslvcr.wimsey.bc.ca ...!ubc-cs!van-bc!eslvcr!ted (Ted Powell)
wtm@uhura.neoucom.EDU (Bill Mayhew) (09/30/90)
ted@eslvcr.wimsey.bc.ca writes: >>>... Not >>>being able to format and print man pages is ridiculous. Expecting >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>man pages? what man pages? >>AT&T Sys V 3.2.[012] are not distributed with man pages. >>that's another $10K > >What man pages? Presumably the same man pages they had in mind when >they made deroff(1) part of the Foundation Set. I believe that most What I had in mind are the manual pages that are distributed with user-supported software such as cnews, kermit,... etc. Even the 3b1/7300 provides functionality for printing out man pages. That is on reason I keep my 3b1 around. The 3b1/7300 nroff Laserjet filters are pretty decent, and it wasn't all that hard to concoct replacements for the missing macros ( -ms, for instance) that live in /usr/lib/tmac. I like the idea of electronic documentation because electronic documentation is easier to keep up to date, saves resorces, can be searched using my computer, saves natural resources,... I'm usually not much of a fan of Apple Computer and the Macintosh line of computers, but I do like the way they did a/ux 2.0. We recently bought a Macintoosh II cx. Buying the mahcine bundld with a/ux only added a couple hundred dollars to the cost. A/ux 2.0 has a nice graphic shell, man pages, troff, postscpit printer support, sl/ip, tcp/ip, uucp, nfs, integrated support for a popular PC O/S (namely, the Mac O/S). Adding X-11 costs about $250. Where they stick it to you is the printed documentation costs about $500. Since there is on-line electronic documentation, I don't mind too much. What isn't too much fun is the hardware; the II cx is a pretty slow computer, despite the fact is sports a 16.5 MHz 68030 and FPU chip. A/ux is available on CD-ROM, which is a neat idea. ==Bill== -- Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM Computer Services Department Rootstown, OH 44272-9995 USA phone: 216-325-2511 wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu ....!uunet!aablue!neoucom!wtm via internet: (140.220.001.001)