Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf.edu!root From: root@cca.ucsf.edu (Systems Staff) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: man pages - what goes where? Summary: Not all system users need system administrator documentation Message-ID: <2115@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> Date: 19 Jun 89 20:34:55 GMT References: <1989Jun19.021419.1512@telly.on.ca> Organization: Computer Center, UCSF Lines: 48 In article <1989Jun19.021419.1512@telly.on.ca>, evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: > I've always semi-understood the layout of Unix man pages. But going through > ... > Specifically, I'm talking about the fact that some source distributions > describe their executables under section 1 (elm, compress, cnews, conf, > kermit, etc...). Yet others choose to put similar information in section 8 > (Bnews, smail) and a straggler or two likes yet something else such as > cookie(6). Section 1 is for the ordinary use programs; section 8 is for programs used only by system administrators. The following relates to the on-line manual files normally found in the filesystem subtree rooted at /usr/man. Some of the _man_ programs around have problems dealing with local additions to the system. Putting their documentation into a separate section has both advantages and disadvantages. The obvious disadvantages are that you then have two places to look instead of of one and there isn't a standard section defined for local additions. The advantage is that you can readily distinguish which programs are local additions and may not be found on other systems even though they have the full complement of facilities for the system in use. The natural way to handle this would be to place them in the same section but flag the local additions with a distinctive suffix (as, for example, BSD systems do for the libraries in section 3). Unfortunately, some of the _man_ commands around can't handle this in the file naming and you have to look inside the files to see their classification. This can be circumvented by, for example, having command man pages appear not only in the man1 directory used by man but have links to separate directories, say man1.local and man1.std. Thos Sumner (thos@cca.ucsf.edu) BITNET: thos@ucsfcca (The I.G.) (...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf!thos) U.S. Mail: Thos Sumner, Computer Center, Rm U-76, UCSF San Francisco, CA 94143-0704 USA OS|2 -- an Operating System for puppets. #include