On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 20:56 -0500, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:47:13 -0500 Patrick Shanahan <ptilopteri@gmail.com> wrote: It is my opinion that man is aimed at those who remember how to do what they want to do, but have forgotten the specific syntax.
I know less than that. For me, man has shortcomings:
- As this thread illustrates, the user has to know WHAT "name" to ask man about. If he hasn't heard of "name", well ...
I have in the past used xman (GUI) to try and find a command. Sometimes it has helped sometimes not.
- man does not distinguish between COMMONLY USED parameters, and those used by specialists. Someone unfamiliar with "name" doesn't know what to pay attention to, vs. what can be skimmed
- man normally DOES NOT GIVE EXAMPLES of how commands are used
For myself, having read 'man rpm' dozens of times, I have a faint idea of some things 'rpm' can do for me. As a relative newbie, betcha there are things others can use 'rpm' for, that I have NOT LEARNED even with many readings of 'man rpm'.
mikus
p.s. [BTW, yes I'll use "trial and error" if something is important to understand - but I don't have the energy to apply that to every situation. And answers to questions on the list sometimes lack detail - for example a suggestion to "search on Google" might be more helpful if it said "search on Google for: 'such_and_such' ".]
Anyone who responds simply with "search the archives" or "search google" helps little. Doing the same with a URL reference helps greatly. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998