Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 00:50:02 -0800 (PST) From: Dima Dorfman <dima@trit.org> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: misc/35727: man(1) program should not display (old) dates in footers. Message-ID: <200203100850.g2A8o2h94645@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR misc/35727; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Dima Dorfman <dima@trit.org>
To: swear@blarg.net
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: misc/35727: man(1) program should not display (old) dates in footers.
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 08:47:32 +0000
"Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> wrote:
> The man(1) program apparently extracts the ".Dd" date from the page
> source and displays it in the footer. Sometimes (when .Dd is not
> used?) the date in the footer is very recent, but very often, the date
> in the footer is very ancient, giving the (usually!) false impression
> to new ("potential old") users that the man pages are poorly maintained
> and tending to encourage the perception that FreeBSD (and other BSD
> OSes) are ancient and obsolecent.
>
> ...
>
> Alternatively, and more work, some automated means to insert the man
> page release date (or even the last modification date -- an actually
> useful date) could be implemented.
The date in .Dd is the time of the last major change (this is
obviously subjective, but usually the adding of a new flag or option,
among other, similar, things, justifies bumping the date) to the page
(except when someone forgets to update it, but ru@ is pretty good
about pouncing on those people). This is a lot more useful than the
last change date according to CVS--many changes are purly mechanical,
and *that* might mislead someone to think the page is changing
(significantly) when it isn't. The reason you see many "ancient"
dates is because some programs and interfaces simply haven't changed
since the 4.4BSD days. For example, I wouldn't want the date in the
strlen(3) page to say 2001/10/01 (last modified time in CVS), since
that creates the impression that something worthwhile changed.
It might be worthwhile to document the meaning of these dates
somewhere, but I don't want to see them removed.
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