On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Tim Rightnour wrote:

: 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.. ;)

It doesn't break _our_ man(1) behavior--add such a section as '4z' to
/etc/man.conf, put something in that man directory, and man it.  It will
work fine.  My suggestion was to _add_ -s to explicitly specify a man
section so there would be no confusion betwen page name and section name.
(It certainly wouldn't be a required option by any means.)

I'm already using one extended man page section locally:  "1v".  It stores
man pages for some System-V "command line equivalent" commands I have in
/usr/5bin.  Deliberately asking for ps(1v) is not difficult. 

: # 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.  

Should I go pull out SVR3 and tell you what the 1-letter codes "should" be?
(Yes, UN*X has used single letters instead of numbers before; SVR3 used man
catgories that were only letters.)  I still argue 7h to prevent a slip back
into SVR3 style; I certainly wouldn't propose 1h or 8h because thse
documents simply aren't commands (the basis for sections 1 and 8).

=====
== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@lucent.com)
== Vierling's Axiom: The revolution won't be televised; it will be posted.