Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-11-17-14:23
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 18:44:12 +0200

Topics:
	 Re: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-11-16-19:22

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From: [email-masked] (Andy Oram)
Subject: Re: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-11-16-19:22
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 16:16:14 +0200

[email-masked] writes:

>   A book describing some of the differences users will find coming
> from various UNIX operating systems (MINIX, SYS V R.x).

You're right as far as I know -- there aren't any books that do this
now.  We've been asked to put one out a few times.  But there are two
problems.  First, it's a huge task -- there are many variants, and
lots of utilities to document.  Second, you've got moving targets, as
companies adopt different base UNIX distributions and sometimes change
one utility at a time.  So we've been sympathetic but never tried to
write such a book.

I think it should be left for an online project.  Imagine a man page
accompanied by a set of buttons listing various variants.  You could
click on a POSIX button to get a list of strictly conforming POSIX
features.  CLick on an AIX button to find out what the hell those
people did.  And so on.

So I guess I'm discouraging you from the project.  To balance that, I
have to say I'm very impressed with what the Linux Doc Project has
accomplished so far, and maybe there are other things like this that
look hard but which you can do!

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Andy Oram    O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.                 [email-masked]
             90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140     (617) 499-7479
             USA                                    fax (617) 661-1116
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