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From: minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: UNIX is yuck (was Re: Next intro...)
Message-ID: <1990Oct10.014558.22953@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 90 01:45:58 GMT
References: <1990Oct9.094857.25894@barsoom.nhh.no>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Lines: 44

by tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo):

me:
>       I'll disagree here. I personally agonize when I have to dig into the
>     UNIX man pages to track down exactly what I need to know to use a
>     routine. [...]
 
tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo):
> That may be so, but you're comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges.
> There's no equivalent of the on-line man pages on the Mac, excepting the
> Inside Macintosh DA that's in the public domain.  The IM books should not
> be compared with the on-line man-pages, but rather with the many different
> books about the Unix operating system that are available.  You'll easily
> be able to find very good books that show you how to interface to the Unix
> system calls etc as clearly as IM does for the Mac.

  But which one is THE definitive standard by written by the designers/
implementors? I'm sorry but man pages are the closest thing to IM in
the way they are distributed and supported. And don't get hung up on the
online part; I can go to a rack down the hall and look at them on paper
(which I generally prefer for trying to LEARN as opposed to remembering
the order of the arguments.) I buy five volumes (soon to be six, I pray.
Oh Apple, who art in Cupertino, bless thy little guy with some of that
info about Sys 7 that is supposedly being spread around...) and I get
most everything I need to know. FTP to apple.com and I have all the Tech
Notes (in stack form _online_ if I prefer). With UNIX, you get to buy
manuals that are the same thing as online but in nicer typefaces.
  As I said before, I _like_ UNIX for my very own special reasons. I
also like the Mac. (In fact, I hate UNIX when I can't use my Mac as a
term with multiple term windows...) The UNIX man pages (printed and
online) are just not very useful for learning about UNIX unless, like
me, you're interested enough to chew on them enough to swallow a few
bits of info here and there.

> After all, IM doesn't come free with the Mac, right?

And neither do printed manuals for the UNIX systems I've dealt with...
last time I checked, I couldn't find any useful UNIX stuff at my
favorite discount bookstore but I did see IM for ~$20 apiece. :-)
-- 
|_    /| | Robert Minich            |
|\'o.O'  | Oklahoma State University| A fanatic is one who sticks to 
|=(___)= | minich@d.cs.okstate.edu  | his guns -- whether they are 
|   U    | - Ackphtth               | loaded or not.