Date: 25 Jan 2002 14:17:14 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Should common/traditional Unix SA tasks be documented? Message-ID: <pahepa6pp1.epa@localhost.localdomain>
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In a recent -questions thread, a Linux refugee gave up trying to determine how to set the clock. (There are two of them which may be set, but I'll leave the issue related to that for a PR.) It's not documented in the Handbook or FAQ, "make -k clock" is no help, and "make -k time" gives 840 words in 80 lines that few will find "date" in. I'm wondering whether such things should be documented in the Handbook. Several posters seemed to think that he was an idiot for not knowing that "date" sets the clock, either because it's traditional Unix or it's in Unix books or man pages. I seemed to me that an OS Handbook should be like the User's Manuals which (used to?) come with OSes and other software. The man pages are more like the Reference Manual, and the Handbook is more like the User Manual which should even have things like "how to set the clock" or even "how to delete a file". (Even if brief as referring to a man page.) Maybe this should be put in a companion book. Or maybe nobody wants to write all this info and it's best to refer to a commercial book or a few, which ever are most BSD-centric. But even then there probably ought to be a section which handles things which are not standard Unix (BSD or SysV?) or even, someone suggested, a "surprises for Linux users" section. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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