mitchell@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (10/03/86)
From what I understand, SVR3 does not come with a machine readable version of the system manual pages for on-line man pages and a on-line record of changes/enhansements made to the system. I've always thought that this was one of the most efficient things about the UNIX development/operating environment. I am suprised at this because I understand that until release 3 on-line man pages came with ATT distributions (especially with a source distribution like we got), and now the only references that I have are the physical manuals. An ATT sales representitive told me that the new ASSIST software in SVR3 would somehow be a replacement for and even better than on-line man pages. ASSIST does not support "help" with any of the programming system/library calls that I OFTEN need, it only can help with shell commands (an a subset at that!). I (personaly) just see that ATT could have been more considerate of developers that are makeing THEIR system valuable by not throwing away facilities that we take as being part of our development environment. I see this as being another obsticle that I have to work around (as if I dont have enough just developing a system). Sincerely, Mitchell
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (10/04/86)
In article <4325@brl-smoke.ARPA> Mitchell Lerner <cadovax!mitchell@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU> writes: >I (personaly) just see that ATT could have been more considerate of developers >that are makeing THEIR system valuable by not throwing away facilities that we >take as being part of our development environment. As near as I can tell, the powers-that-be at ATTIS view UNIX primarily in the context of being packaged with their hardware (e.g. 3B2s) for sale to end users, rather than as a product aimed primarily at software developers (who provide the actual applications that the end user really cares about). For a dramatic illustration of the difference between these audiences, check out the Apple Macintosh software development facilities versus the typical friendly user-oriented Mac application program user interface. I think AT&T is making a big mistake by not realizing that UNIX's design and packaging should be targeted primarily at the needs of the application developer. The "iron mongers" should not be making the decisions about the operating system software, since they have the wrong point of view.