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From: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Re: net.doc
Message-ID: <1019@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 10:50:57 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1019
Posted: Tue Oct 29 10:50:57 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Oct-85 06:48:33 EST
References: <96@tekadg.UUCP> <2850@pesnta.UUCP> <354@ihdev.UUCP> <1011@oddjob.UUCP> <267@yetti.UUCP>
Reply-To: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Organization: University of Chicago, Department of Physics
Lines: 36
Xref: watmath net.followup:5387 net.news.group:4069
Summary: 

In article <267@yetti.UUCP> peter@yetti.UUCP (Runge) writes:
>> I agree with Peter that "man -k" is extremely useful; much more useful than
>> a VMS-style "help" command, which depends on a command name's ability to
>> convey the gist of the command's function (which, of course, would not work
>> with UNIX command names, and often does not with VMS command names). 
>
>There's a lot of unintentional humor in this comparison.  The percentage of
>meaningful VMS commands relative to the total set is far higher than for
>UNIX (the only meaningful Unix command I can remember off-hand is yes :-)),

I do not deny that VMS command names are generally more meaningful than
UNIX command names, but that doesn't make help easier to use than man -k.
They are both keyword-oriented, but with help you have a user trying to
sift through a screen-full of keywords (some of which ARE meaningless in
their generality -- set and analyze come to mind) to possibly find the
one you are thinking of.  With man -k, the program does the sifting
for you, and through a much larger data base, the command descriptions.
The latter are going to have a better set of meaningful keywords (assuming
they are well-written) since they are not limited to being one keyword
per command.

>and man -k is notorious for its inability to find anything appropriate.

How often does your brain flash "Nothing appropriate" when you are using
VMS help? (:-)

>For one thing, on our 780, asking for a man file to be
>retrieved and formatted is something you do before leaving your office for
>a coffee or a washroom break.

Get your system manager to set up the 'cat' version of the manuals.  They
take up about 3 MB of disk space, but are much faster than the unformatted
versions.

					Scott Anderson
					ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra