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Re: Resizing problem
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Olwe Melwasul <> wrote:
> I'd say offer tutorials and guides that include "known issues". This
> is very common in other OS projects. Do some hand-holding on-line.
> Don't patronize people. And no, man pages are not suited for newbies
> as guides or tutorials. They're for pros who know what they're doing.
I frequently learn almost everything I need to know about an
application by using its man pages as well as its info doc if it has
it. One of the finest moments in my introduction to *nix was when I
discovered I could learn about any command by simply typing 'man
<command>'. I'd love it if Windows had a similar feature.
Not to be patronizing, but by definition, if someone knows what they
are doing, they won't check out a man page anyway.
If you want to know about "Cygwin" try the Cygwin User's Guide
http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html. It has plain
English explanations about how Cygwin works. There is also the FAQ
http://cygwin.com/faq.html which may answer some of the whys or why
nots that the UG skims over.
I read the UG and FAQ a few times a month and I always find what I am
looking for or learn something new.
If you want to get deep into Cygwin's past, I'd suggest doing a custom
Google search with 'site:cygwin.com/ml/cygwin' to search strictly the
mailing list archives.
Finally, if you *do* happen to find any tutorials about how to do
things with Cygwin and they aren't on the cygwin.com website, they are
probably outdated and are definitely not supported by the Cygwin core
team. For example, I know there are several old tutorials on getting
ssh to work with Cygwin. They are wrong.
Oh, Cygwin specific bits of trivia about installed packages can be
found in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin.
Again, don't dis' the man page. Try 'man bash' or 'man grep' for
examples of excellent man pages with examples and detailed
explanations. If you have it installed, try 'man nmap'; the source of
the man page is the same source used to build the online
documentation.
'man' is one of the most useful commands there is. Please don't
discount it as some esoteric, propeller head gizmo.
-Jason
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