Re: Documentation of services

[Peter Smith <pasmith wbmpl com au>]

James Wilkinson wrote:

> Kevin Wang wrote:
>  
>
> > You really want to leave service names the same. don't change them
> > gratuitously.  It confuses users.
> >    
<snip, snippety snip>

> So what's the best way to document these services? We've had suggestions
> of man pages: what else, besides third party web sites, is reasonable?
>
>  
>
> > It's not nearly as simple as you might think.  For example, nfs
> > depends on 'portmap'.  imho dependencies like this need to be
> > expressed somehow, but the existing infrastructure doesn't do that.
> >    
>
> I'm glad we agree!
>
> James.
>
>  
As an ancient newbie, I'd like to add my pennyworth -

There must be a man page associated with each package name. 
There should to be a man page associated with each command name. 
Each man page associated with a package should identify all the commands 
in the package ("See Also"), and (my pet gripe for this week) it should 
identify all the files affected by the command ("Files"). 
I get annoyed at the way that the "hard bits" are being hidden from the 
tender eyes of the non-coder, a la Windows, especially with respect to 
the GUI interfaces.  And what's with this new-fangled "info" stuff, anyway?
</rant>  I feel better now..

Regards,
Peter Smith