From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Kerrisk Subject: Re: [patch] standards.7: Added more references Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 06:14:19 +0200 Message-ID: References: <45544.118.208.205.39.1243685024.squirrel@h4c.kr> <59652.59.167.195.42.1243894387.squirrel@h4c.kr> Reply-To: mtk.manpages-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <59652.59.167.195.42.1243894387.squirrel-pV9j36CBp5Q@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-man-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: alfie-pV9j36CBp5Q@public.gmane.org Cc: linux-man-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-man@vger.kernel.org Hi Alfie, On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Alfie John 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 Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git man-pages online: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online_pages.html Found a bug? http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html