change file names

Bill McGonigle bill at bfccomputing.com
Tue Feb 21 11:31:01 EST 2006


On Feb 21, 2006, at 10:51, Jon maddog Hall wrote:

> I use "apropos" a lot, but it is just not the same as the printed man 
> pages.

You're on to something there.

It got me thinking, "so what's the good modern-day equivalent that 
doesn't involve dead trees"? At first I thought, well there must be an 
RSS feed for "Man Page of the Day".  There's one fella who has a 
sub-section of his blog dedicated to that which he updates once every 
several months.

Then I thought about "Did you Know?" type tip-helpers that things like 
The GIMP use, and could that be automated into a motd or similar.  But 
that requires someone to write them.

There are a few great man pages, and more and more they have an 
EXAMPLES section, but many are written to be exactly as concise as 
possible to provide just enough information to be almost useful to the 
reader and a good reference for someone who has already mastered the 
command.

So then I thought, "well, that's what the O'Reilly Cookbooks are for" - 
and then it dawned on me - they're printed on real dead trees, fun to 
read, and make a reasonable Unix Bathroom Reader.

-Bill
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