On 11-Dec-97 Ty Sarna spoke unto us all:
# It's also why I vote against 7. How-to's are more important enough (and,
# I hope, will one day be numerous enough) to  deservetheir own section.
# 
# 7h is marginally better, but still not right. 3 vs 3f makes sense;
# they're both for library functions, but of a slightly different kind.
# "how-to's" and "stuff that doesn't belong anywhere else" don't seem
# related to me.

I agree with you there, and I think that makes sense..  I disklike the 3f style
thing, because it breaks the "man 3 wotever" facitlity.. which I like *ALOT*. 
Call me lazy, but I hate typing man -s 3 main.  I've been using it without the
s my whole life.. to change it now would be annoying.. I would get over it..
but it would still bother me.. ;)

# > I don't think we should use the 0.  I'm sure it will be more useful for
# > something else eventually
# 
# That's kind of my feeling.

As someone else pointed out.. (duh) catman uses the 0.  I slap myself on the
forehead.

# > man interface to it..  If it had to be it's own category.. I would suggest
# > something like H for HELP or wotever..
# 
# I agree about /usr/share/doc (which someone else -- Hubert? --
# mentioned). Anyone who knows anything about unix knows man. OTOH,
# even experienced sysadmins coming from other systems man not think to
# check /usr/share/doc. Another benefit of man is apropos.

Yeah.. and usr/share/doc is usually in such bad shape that I don't really
bother to look at it.  I have read through it all.. but it's such a pain to
load a ps viewer to read.. its nearly not worth having.  Having it compile to
ascii CLEANLY would be leaps and bounds in the right direction.

# 
# I think weshould actually be moving stuff out of /usr/share/doc into
# manpages, but it's not an easy task.
# 
# I vote for section H.  Or, if it's deemed appropriate to have two
# sections for user and sysadmin how-tos, which might be a good idea (like
# 1 vs 8), I'd vote for section A (administrative procedures) and H (user
# how-tos). 
# 

I like the A and H section ideas. A) it doesnt break current man behavior. B) I
LIKE appropos, and would want the how to's available to it. C) we're out of
numbers, and we could argue forever about if it should be 1h or 7h or 8h.  

Only thing is.. it should be case INsensitive..  I don't forsee having 36 man
categories, and if we do.. we have a much bigger problem on our hands...

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.futureone.com
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html