RPM

[Les Mikesell]

Andrew Kelly wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-30 at 15:13 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Dave Burns wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/30/07, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
>>>>     I printed out Maximum RPM in 1997 and I refer to it often. I was
>>>> told today to use:
>>>>
>>>>     # rpm -q --whatprovides (complete direction to a file) and it did
>>>> provide the name of the file that provides /etc/rc.d/init.d/nvideo.
>>>>
>>>>     Then just now I got to page 51 and there it listed this capability.
>>>> I have had this capability for 8 years but didn't know it...
>>>> :-)
>> If you learn to read man pages you don't need so many books.  They are a 
>> lot faster to read, too.
> 
> But a lot less convenient on the bus (train, plane, toilet, in the park
> near the lake, on the couch during commercials, in the waiting room at
> the doctor's office, etc and so forth). And they just aren't as bloody
> "sexy" as a nicely printed book, are they? :-)

If you carry a laptop, you can have them all much more portably than a 
big stack of paper books and easier to search.

> 
> And, as this list and certain of its members have indeed quite recently
> shown, not every man page is written in a way that Joe Lunchbox can
> readily assimilate. Heck, let's be blunt here. Some of them are
> remarkably poorly written.

That's why I said 'learn to read' them. It wasn't an insult - it isn't 
easy.  They all assume that you already know everything the shell will 
do to your commands before the program in question even starts; many 
assume you already know what a lot of other man pages say.  But once you 
do know those things you don't want to read them again every time.

> That said, I'm not in complete disagreement with you, Les. RTFM is even
> today completely apropos and should be the mantra of everybody who's
> chosen to be part of the Linux experience. But don't knock a book,
> Maestro. It kind of pisses us scribblers off.

Tutorial styles are OK but you only need them once.  After you know 
_what_ a program does you want a concise reference instead.  Books 
should split the sections so you don't have to wade through pages and 
pages of tutorial when all you want to find is one option setting.


> Andy
> 
> (Every try to loan a great man page to a friend?)

Better to be even more concise there and give them the one line command 
they are looking for.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com