Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-10-28-23:2
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1993 05:39:22 +0200

Topics:
	 [MAN PAGE PROJECT] man-pages-1.1.tar.gz available

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From: Rik Faith <[email-masked]>
Subject: [MAN PAGE PROJECT] man-pages-1.1.tar.gz available
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1993 00:55:19 +0200

                        *** PRE-RELEASE ***

                    *** NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION ****

The next release of the man page project is now available for anonymous ftp
ftom ftp.cs.unc.edu:/pub/faith/linux/man-pages-1.1.tar.gz.  Please check it
out and give me bug reports ASAP, so that I can release it before the end
of the year.  The announcement appears at the end of this notice.

There has been some discussion of "standards" within the man pages.
Currently, all (most?) of the man pages in the distribution conform to the
following standards, as set forth in the man(7) page:

       Although  there  are  many  arbitrary  conventions for man
       pages in the UNIX world, the existence of several  hundred
       Linux-specific man pages defines our standards:

              For  functions,  the arguments are always specified
              using italics, even in the SYNOPSIS section,  where
              the rest of the function is specified in bold:
              int myfunction(int argc, char **argv);

              Filenames    are    always    in   italics   (e.g.,
              /usr/include/stdio.h), except in the SYNOPSIS  sec-
              tion,  where  included  files  are  in  bold (e.g.,
              #include <stdio.h>).

              Special macros, which are usually  in  upper  case,
              are in bold (e.g., MAXINT).

              When  enumerating  a list of error codes, the codes
              are in bold (this list usually uses the .TP macro).

              Any  reference  to another man page (or to the sub-
              ject of the current man page) is in bold.   If  the
              manual  section  number  is  given,  it is given in
              roman, without any spaces (e.g., man(7)).

Although some of you may not agree with this, this is the de facto standard
for Linux, as mandated by the 500 man pages that currently exist.  These
man pages are, in general (if not in particular), consistent.

I plan to devote my time and energy to correcting factual errors in the man
pages.  I think this is far more useful than dealing with formatting
considerations.  (I will fix -, \-, \(en, and \(em as they are noticed.  I
will also fix any lengths that don't look well under troff or on a laser
printer with groff.  Of course, any actual nroff errors will be fixed.)

**************************************************************************
IF SOMEONE HAS SOME TIME TO WORK ON MAN PAGES, PLEASE SEE undocumented(2),
AND DOCUMENT THE LAST FEW SYSTEM CALLS THAT NEED IT:

break, stty, gtty, prof, ulimit, setsid, siggetmask, sigsetmask,
socketcall, klog, sigreturn, clone, syslog

**************************************************************************

Here is the announcement for the new version:

The Linux Documentation Project proudly announces. . .

    man-pages-1.1.tar.gz - section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 man pages for Linux

Differences from version 1.0:
    Thanks to Giorgio Ciucci for the following *NEW* man pages:
        msgctl.2        msgrcv.2        semget.2        shmdt.2
        msgget.2        msgsnd.2        semop.2         ipc.5
        msgop.2         semctl.2        shmat.2         ftok.3
    and for updates to shmctl.2, shmget.2, and shmop.2.

    Michael Haardt pointed out that some general formatting problems needed
    fixing:
            Multi-word arguments to .SH are now in quotes
            Many instances of - (hyphen) were changed to \- (minus)
            Several instances of \- (minus) were changed to \(em (dash)

    shells.5 updated (thanks to Michael Haardt)
    Minor updates to write.2, man.7, and a few other man pages.
    Inclusion of BSD man pages for fopen, fclose, printf, sprintf, etc.

Here is a breakdown of what this distribution contains:

Section 2 = system calls
Section 3 = libc calls
Section 4 = devices (e.g., hd, sd)
Section 5 = file formats (e.g., wtmp, /etc/passwd)
Section 7 = macro packages, etc. (e.g., nroff, ascii)
Section 9 = internal kernel routines (for kernel hackers)

(There are no section 1 or section 8 man pages because these should be
distributed with the binaries they are written for.)

Note that only Section 2 is really complete, but Section 3 contains several
hundred man pages.  I have included all completed man pages in this
distribution to give people an idea of what is available.  If you want to
write some man pages, please join the linux-activists DOC channel.

To install this distribution, do something like:

    cd /usr/man; zcat man-pages-1.1.tar.gz | tar xvpf -

I would like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order by first
name) who wrote, edited, or otherwise contributed to this project:

Alan Cox
Dan Miner
Darren Senn
David Metcalfe
Drew Eckhardt
Giorgio Ciucci
Ian Jackson
Luigi P. Bai
Michael Haardt
Thomas Koenig

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End of DOC Digest
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