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X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 15:11:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: ssmtp man page (Was: Re: sending email from Cygwin)
In-Reply-To: <20040716093631.GR1389@cygbert.vinschen.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0407161505430.10869@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <20040715081800 DOT GC19753 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <20040716020103 DOT B6B8584C87 AT pessard DOT research DOT canon DOT com DOT au> <20040716093631 DOT GR1389 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de>
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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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