Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!OPUS.CS.MCGILL.CA!bajan From: bajan@OPUS.CS.MCGILL.CA (Alan Emtage) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Remote NeXT Users, etc. Message-ID: <8909272058.AA16856@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> Date: 27 Sep 89 20:58:09 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 59 In his message of 25 Sep 89 03:13:33 GMT jst@cca.ucsf.edu writes: > > Listen, Joe: > > It's fine if you want to use things in ways in which the > designers did not intend them to be used. For example, feel > free to drive your car with your only your feet instead of your > hands (but not on my street, of course). > > [stuff deleted] > .... > > To be fair, I (and probably some of the other news readers) are > interested in the technical problems you've encountered. I am > sure that the people at NeXT are interested in the technical > problems you've found, even if they can't give you an immediate > workaround. I'm sure the NeXT product could be improved, but > it will be improved most quickly if we all send in clear, > concise bug reports, rather than personal complaints. Agreed. I myself found the original poster's tone a bit too snarky however that said, I have to strongly disagree with the following. > I won't go into the gory details of the problems you've brought > up, except to choose one example where I think you are being > unreasonable. You say that it would be philosophically wise to > maintain the Unix man pages. I don't at all think this to a be an unreasonable request. Since I do it on a regular basis, standard UNIX man pages, for those of us who are used to them, are easy to change and update. I am a member of a system staff charged with operating a number of NeXT machines (probably with more on the way), and I find having the documentation split between the Librarian and the man pages to be a real pain in the butt. I have no problem with NeXT trying to expand the man pages in the Librarian, however, there is no excuse for not having the basics (where the command is, a short description and what it's options are) in a man page available to be read on a standard ascii terminal. I should *not* have to go to another building to get to a Cube to get this information. If NeXT is pushing it's ``compatibility'' with 4.3 BSD then whatever it layers on top of 4.3 the underlying functionality should still be there. We haven't yet had the time to upgrade to 1.0 but I should hope that such glaring omissions as not mentioning that vipw did not update the Netinfo stuff was perhaps acceptable for 0.9, *not* for 1.0. The Librarian might be very pretty and useful for the neophyte, but those of us who have to maintain the machines (and us used-to-be neophytes) have come to expect a certain functionality. Please have it available. If you're going to be giving me BSD and more, fine. But get the BSD right first. Alan (bajan@cs.mcgill.ca or listmaster@cs.mcgill.ca)