man-pages-2.52 and man-pages-2.53 are released

man-pages-2.52 and man-pages-2.53 are released

[Michael Kerrisk]

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines"

         Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

But damn it, those man pages were a mess!

Perhaps for the first time in their 14-year history, the sections in all of
the pages on man-pages are now in the same order...  The standard order
(with many sections being optional) is now:

            NAME
            SYNOPSIS
            DESCRIPTION
            RETURN VALUE
            ERRORS
            ENVIRONMENT
            FILES
            VERSIONS
            CONFORMING TO
            NOTES
            BUGS
            EXAMPLE
            SEE ALSO

So, I just released man-pages-2.52 and man-pages-2.53.  As well as that
change, there are a very large number of changes to achieve greater
consistency across man pages; full details can be found in the change logs.

In the upcoming man-pages-2.54 release, a new man-pages.7 page will
describe the conventions that should be followed when writing pages for
man-pages.

These releases are now available for download at:

    http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages
    or ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages
    or mirrors: ftp://ftp.XX.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages

and soon at:

    ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7

Want to help with man page maintenance?  Grab the latest tarball at
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages/
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source files for 'FIXME'.