Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!blake!milton!uw-beaver!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!nosun!techbook!jamesd
From: jamesd@techbook.UUCP (James Deibele)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Finding Manuals
Message-ID: <272@techbook.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 90 02:37:52 GMT
References: <7147@netcom.UUCP> <15167@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Reply-To: jamesd@techbook.UUCP (James Deibele)
Distribution: na
Organization: TECHbooks, Beaverton Oregon --- Public Access UNIX too!
Lines: 43

In article <15167@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
>In article <7147@netcom.UUCP> jfh@netcom.UUCP (Jack Hamilton) writes:
>>I, for example, have an account on a timesharing system which runs Xenix.  
>>I believe that a Xenix reference manual exists.  I've looked at several 
>>bay area bookstores for it - Kepler's, Stacy's, Stanford University 
>>Bookstore (main branch and technical branch), Printers Inc, Clean Well 
>>Lighted Place for Books, even Crown - and there are lots of Unix books 
>>out there, but no Xenix manual.  
[...]
>Many common questions are answerable regardless of which UNIX or Xenix
>variant you're running.  Anyway there are definitely Xenix books out
>there!  B Daltons and other major chains have them.

I'll bet they (the chains) don't, not unless you're looking at a very large
store (all the stores are automatically stocked by computers which operate
on data set up by buyers in New York (used to be Minneapolis, before Barnes &
Noble bought B. Dalton)).  However many people use XENIX (lots do and don't
know it, since they just see the application, not the OS), it doesn't compare
to DOS.  For most bookstores, UNIX/XENIX sales probably rank up there with the
C64 or Apple II.  Seriously.  In fact, they probably sell more books on the C64
than UNIX.

However, Books In Print lists 17 books with the keyword "XENIX" in the title
and several of them have a magic "I" beside them.  The magic "I" means that the
Ingram Book Company carries them, and I'll bet every store listed above does
business with Ingram (a distributor who buys from publishers and sells to the
bookstores).  Try picking one of the bookstores and asking them to order one 
of them for you.  _Inside XENIX_ by the Waite Group and _XENIX at Work_ (from
Microsoft Press, who does good books) would be good choices.

There are some differences that you might encounter as a programmer, but as a
user, probably the only major difference would be the visual shell.  

You might try asking the people behind the counter for help next time.  Yeah,
I know that there are a lot of morons working in bookstores, but I've heard
good things about Stanford and Stacy's and you might even find somebody who
knew what you were talking about ...

-- 
jamesd@techbook.UUCP ...!tektronix!nosun!techbook!jamesd 
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