Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 15:15:42 -0800 (PST) From: Mike Pritchard <mpp> To: obrien@NUXI.com Cc: CVS-committers@freefall.freebsd.org, cvs-all@freefall.freebsd.org, cvs-share@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/share/man/man3 fpgetround.3 Message-ID: <199703202315.PAA05424@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <19970320122121.52629@dragon.nuxi.com> from "David O'Brien" at Mar 20, 97 12:21:21 pm
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David O'Brien wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 19, 1997 at 01:13:59PM -0800, Mike Pritchard wrote: > > I was trying to figure out the best way to do this, and I'm leaning > > towards removing this type of thing from the SYNOPSIS section. > > I think they are better placed in the main manual page text, and > > defined within literal text blocks. Someone who is just checking the > > If this changes a large number of man pages, they should be left alone > IMHO. If it is just a few of them that abuse the SYNOPSIS section, then > cool. If it is a lot of man pages that do this, then that implies this > usage was the intention of the CSRG. > > I was drawn to *BSD vs. Linux for folklore and history reason. It was > only after trying FreeBSD that I found all the other reasons to use it > over Linux. So I really like keeping our heritage alone when there > isn't a completing reason not to. There are about half a dozen or so man pages that fall into this category, and a couple of those are FreeBSD specific. So I think they are fair game, but I'm not sure exactly what to do about a couple of them just yet. And if I see something I don't like, I usually go and check to see if it is done that way a lot, and if it is I usually leave it alone. I've always hated the "we do it this way for historical reasons" argument, because it usually wastes more time doing it the "historical" way all the time, rather than spending the time to convert it to the correct way once and making everyones life easier in the long run. With that said, I try and change the orignal man page text as little as possible. Once in a while someone sends in a PR saying some man page is confusing on some issue and they re-write an entire paragraph or two. I try and just add another sentence or two if that is all it takes to make it clearer. -- Mike Pritchard mpp@FreeBSD.org "Go that way. Really fast. If something gets in your way, turn"
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