Mail Archives: cygwin/2004/07/16/15:12:10
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Jul 16 12:01, luke.kendall<SPLAT>cisra.canon.com.au wrote:
> > On 15 Jul, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > > > Incidentally is it appropriate to include Cygwin-port-specific
> > > > information in a man page?
> > >
> > > Well, from a user perspective it might be cool, but IMHO the original
> > > man page shouldn't be changed, unless it's a change which should be
> > > send upstream anyway. We have the Cygwin specific documentation in
> > > /usr/share/doc/Cygwin (resp. /usr/doc/Cygwin in earlier releases) for
> > > a long time now. It should be not too hard to ask users to look there
> > > for Cygwin specific docs.
> > >
> > > Corinna
> >
> > Can you think of a way of incorporating the material in the man page
> > that would be palatable upstream? How do you think people would feel
> > about a section "PORTABILITY" or "NOTES" or even "WINDOWS" or "CYGWIN"?
>
> I have no idea. That's something you would have to ask the upstream
> maintainer. But the first question is if the Cygwin maintainer likes
> the idea.
>
> > The above question is relevant to a patch for the ssmtp man page. If
> > ssmtp uses ssmtp-config on most platforms it works on, then I can just
> > write a patch that includes both fixes.
>
> ssmtp-config is a Cygwin specific script.
>
> > This is a usability issue. It's hard enough to teach people to type:
> >
> > man <command-name>
> >
> > teaching them to type:
> >
> > more /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/ssmtp-0.x.y/README.ssmtp-0.x.y
>
> Don't make it overly complicated. `less /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/ssmtp*'
> is enough. And telling people that /usr/share/doc/Cygwin contains
> Cygwin specific README files isn't that hard, really.
>
> Corinna
Yep, nice choice of words here. *Telling* them is definitely not hard.
Getting them to do it before sending questions to the list is. :-)
Actually, there's an interesting point in this thread. Would it be a good
idea to have a reference to the Cygwin-specific README in the manpages for
every Cygwin package that has one (say, in the SEE ALSO section)? I know
that most maintainers prefer the upstream manpages in their pristine
state, and don't like making the Cygwin-specific patches larger, but this
might actually save some bandwidth on the list.
Another possible place to mention the Cygwin-specific READMEs is in the
"man cygwin" page. :-)
Perhaps this is more appropriate for cygwin-apps now...
Igor
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