Re: [patch] standards.7: Added more references

[Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>]

Hi Alfie,

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Alfie John <alfie-pV9j36CBp5Q@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hey,
>
>> I don't doubt that these are the best currently available books on
>> their subject matter, but in the end, I don't think standards(7)
>> should act as a bibliography.
>
>> But my inclination would be to take the references to Gallmeister and
>> Lewine out (both now rather dated), rather than add more references.
>> And in fact, that is what I've done. (Adding more books to
>> standards(7) would only lead me into temptation one day in the
>> future.)
>
> Are you sure that is the best thing to do? Man pages are there to help the
> reader get a better picture. The more information the better I would have
> thought.
>
> What if somebody were to look at standards(7) and wanted to know more
> information? Instead of going to what people considered the best material
> available (be it books, websites etc), they would instead waste their time
> searching and maybe getting inferior or incorrect information. This leads
> to floods of questions to forums, IRC and mailing lists. And I'm sure one
> common response to these type of questions is going to be "if you want
> more info, the best place is X book"!

To which my answer would be: look at a search engine, or an online bookstore.

I don't think it is the place of man pages to adjudicate on what are
the "best" books.

> It would cut out the middle man if references were there from the
> beginning :)
>
>> So, sorry -- but I won't take this patch.
>
> No problem. I'm just trying to help out people who are in the same boat as
> me -- people wanting to know where the best place to find things are.
> Maybe a man page called "unix-references", "unix-books" or
> "programming-books" would be a better option.

Or maybe looking somewhere else than man pages is best ;-).

Cheers,

Michael


-- 
Michael Kerrisk
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