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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Dumb Question.
Message-ID: <1991Mar7.013903.27370@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 91 01:39:03 GMT
References: <817@mara.cognet.ucla.edu>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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In article <817@mara.cognet.ucla.edu>, kroger@scarecrow.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:
|> Question: how is one supposed to know what these programs do?
|> The comments at the beginning always say something like
|> "this is version 7 of the fourth release of binshellarchthing
|> with modifications to the processthing to be compatible with the
|> otherthing. Cut here."

  First of all, the title and archive name of packages usually gives a pretty
good idea of what the packages do.

  Second, I just made a quick scan through the unexpired source postings in
several different newsgroups (comp.sources.games, comp.sources.misc,
comp.sources.unix, and comp.sources.x) and pretty much all of them do what you
ask here.

  Make sure you look at the *first posting* in a multi-part posting when
looking for the package description.  Remember that news often arrives out of
order.

  And, if you do stumble upon a package with no introduction, then find the
README file and read it.  If you don't want to unpack just to read the README
file, then search for the string README in each of the shars (it's usually in
the first one, but sometimes isn't) until you find it.

  As for the reason why there are a few packages that get posted without
introductions, the answer is, "Because sometimes people forget to include an
introduction."

  Another possible answer is that you're looking at patches to previously
released software; there is no reason to include a long description in a
patch; if you want to know what the original package did, then go to the
archives and retrieve the original package.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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