Re: Resizing problem

[Olwe Melwasul <hercynianforest at gmail dot com>]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM, DePriest, Jason R.
<jrdepriest@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Olwe Melwasul <> wrote:
>> I'd say offer tutorials and guides that include "known issues". This
>> is very common in other OS projects. Do some hand-holding on-line.
>> Don't patronize people. And no, man pages are not suited for newbies
>> as guides or tutorials. They're for pros who know what they're doing.
>
>
> I frequently learn almost everything I need to know about an
> application by using its man pages as well as its info doc if it has
> it. ÂOne of the finest moments in my introduction to *nix was when I
> discovered I could learn about any command by simply typing 'man
> <command>'. ÂI'd love it if Windows had a similar feature.
>
> Not to be patronizing, but by definition, if someone knows what they
> are doing, they won't check out a man page anyway.
>
> If you want to know about "Cygwin" try the Cygwin User's Guide
> http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html. ÂIt has plain
> English explanations about how Cygwin works. ÂThere is also the FAQ
> http://cygwin.com/faq.html which may answer some of the whys or why
> nots that the UG skims over.
>
> I read the UG and FAQ a few times a month and I always find what I am
> looking for or learn something new.
>
> If you want to get deep into Cygwin's past, I'd suggest doing a custom
> Google search with 'site:cygwin.com/ml/cygwin' to search strictly the
> mailing list archives.
>
> Finally, if you *do* happen to find any tutorials about how to do
> things with Cygwin and they aren't on the cygwin.com website, they are
> probably outdated and are definitely not supported by the Cygwin core
> team. ÂFor example, I know there are several old tutorials on getting
> ssh to work with Cygwin. ÂThey are wrong.
>
> Oh, Cygwin specific bits of trivia about installed packages can be
> found in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin.
>
> Again, don't dis' the man page. ÂTry 'man bash' or 'man grep' for
> examples of excellent man pages with examples and detailed
> explanations. ÂIf you have it installed, try 'man nmap'; the source of
> the man page is the same source used to build the online
> documentation.
>
> 'man' is one of the most useful commands there is. ÂPlease don't
> discount it as some esoteric, propeller head gizmo.
>

After my last email, I
a) went down to the lake (Superior) and stuck my head underwater until
the steam stopped bubbling up
b) took some horse tranquilizers
c) read the Wikipedia article on Mother Teresa

I'm okay now.

Yes, I'll do that, Jason. And yes, man pages are actually beautiful.
W. Richard Stevens (Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment) said
that it's very important to learn how to read code. I guess learning
how to wade through man pages is similar; after all, it's just a step
above reading the source code. Yes, batteries may be included, but
some heavy lifting may be required.

O
GM, MN

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