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Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:11:32 -0800
From: George <d1945 AT sbcglobal DOT net>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Cygwin: Where is the Help Guide
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On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 01:12:22PM +0000, zzapper wrote:

LOL.  Gotta love this enthusiasm.

> [...]
> 
> This (searchable) newsgroup on the web
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin/

Newsgroup 'on the web'?  Words fail me.

More accurately, Gmane provides the contents of various mailing list
archives in a newsgroup format for those who prefer news over mail, or
otherwise choose not to subscribe to a mailing list.  Posting to the
newsgroup requires a valid subscription to the respective mailing list,
but reading it requires only pointing your news client to
news.gmane.org.  Also worth pointing out is the Gmane's archives go way
back, even for large values of way. 

As for what's in those archives, reviewing the contents of
http://cygwin.com/acronyms/ beforehand might go a long way, as the 'wtf'
command provides no information on Cygwin-isms, or sheds any light on
the increasingly obscure hippo references.

> command line help
> > man zsh
> > info zsh
> > pinfo zsh
> > whatis zsh
> > where zsh

The 'where' command is useful only if one generates the whereis database
by running /usr/sbin/makewhatis (something regrettably not done by any
of the installation routines).  Also useful is 'apropos' (or 'man -k'),
as well as making regular use of 'which' and 'type' to help you keep
things straight.
 
> [...]
> 
> What else?

Perhaps what's in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin, as well as various other
package-specific READMEs in /usr/share/doc?  Then, of course, there's
all those *other* docs, tutorials, etc. typically not available from
anywhere but the source package.

FWIW, I'd like to think that expanding the contents of the Cygwin man
pages ('man cygwin' and 'man intro') to provide the above information as
well as offer an overview of Cygwin-specific tools, etc. would go a long
way.

-- 
George 

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