From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (qmail 29342 invoked from network); 17 Dec 1998 17:04:15 -0000 Received: from mail.redhat.com (199.183.24.239) by lists.redhat.com with SMTP; 17 Dec 1998 17:04:15 -0000 Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by mail.redhat.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA06851 for ; Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:54:17 -0500 Received: from world.std.com by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id LAA20252; Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:54:15 -0500 (EST) Received: by world.std.com (TheWorld/Spike-2.0) id AA18366; Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:54:15 -0500 Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:54:15 -0500 From: lark@world.std.com (Lar Kaufman) Message-Id: <199812171654.AA18366@world.std.com> To: Charles Hallenbeck <2ndsight@taconic.net>, Blind Linux Discussions , blinux-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: where are docs for "ex" List-Id: Hmm, looks like my email edit got scrambled. Sorry about that. The manpage database is called "whatis" (usually "whatis" command is an alias for "man -k" or "apropos" on a unix system) so you need to run "makewhatis" (or possibly mkwhatis on some implementations) in order to build the manpage database. The data collected in the database is taken from the summary line of the manpage, plus keyword line information if that has been built into the manpage. I've been thinking about the need to put some of this data back into the manpages; at one time unix users depended on manpages a great deal and documentation was enriched to use the available tools, but in the Linux and FreeBSD worlds, many users aren't aware of these more subtle features of unix, nor are software developers. And if they come from a GNU universe, they are likely to be more familiar with Info pages, which are less tailored for text-oriented utilization. Indeed, I will be happy to start building a repository of enriched manpages and utilities for text and text-to-voice rendering, so if anyone wants to contribute, you can pass your files to me. I'll have to see whether I can get my own homepage set up next week to allow retrieval of the pages; I'll try to set up an ftp archive on ftp.walden.com if my services administrator will cooperate. -lar "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. No time for dancing or lovey-dovey, I ain't got time for that now. I sent a message through the receiver, hope to get an answer someday. Why stay in college? Why go to night school? Thought I'd be different this time." -D. Byrne