95 lines
4.2 KiB
Groff
95 lines
4.2 KiB
Groff
General notes on the Minix 1.5 man command:
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Unix systems generally seem to keep man pages as individual
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files named according to the subject and the section, for example,
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rm.1, ls.1, chmod.2, etc., in directories named according to the
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manual section, such as man1/, man2/, etc. These files may not be not
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flat text, they may be compressed and/or they may need to be passed
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through a formatting program such as nroff.
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The Minix man files that are available over the net are tarred
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collections of such files (not compressed, but needing to be run
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through a formatting program).
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Minix 1.5 man files do it differently. The Minix 1.5.10 man
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command expects to find a single large flat text file for each man
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section. One could debate whether this is a good idea or not, but it
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isn't the way most other Unix systems do it. It is probably more
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practical for the very small file systems on the floppy-based PCs for
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which Minix was originally developed. The man index display (see
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below) is definitely a more friendly interface than the standard Unix
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man system, which won't give you much help if you don't already know
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which command you want to ask about.
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There isn't any documentation on the format of man files
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except what is inherent in the man.c source. The man files consist of
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keyword lines that begin with a "#" in the first column, followed by
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lines of text to be displayed when one of the keywords in the
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preceding keyword line is selected from the keyword menu or as an
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argument to the man command. The keyword lines are not displayed, but
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all lines of text up to but not including the next keyword line will
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be displayed. New articles may be added to a man file by
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concatenation, but if a keyword appears more than once only the last
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reference will be displayed.
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In use, the Minix 1.5.10 man command expects to find files
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man<n> in the directory/usr/man. The command format is
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man [<arg1> [arg2]]
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If the command is given with no arguments a menu of the
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keywords in /usr/man/man1 is presented.
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If the commmand is given with one argument, if the argument is
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a <n> suffix of a man<n> file in /usr/man a menu of the keywords in
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man<n> is presented.
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If the commmand is given with one argument, if the argument is
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not a <n> suffix of a man<n> file in /usr/man a search is made for an
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article with a keyword corresponding to arg1 in /usr/man/man1.
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If the command is given with two arguments the first argument
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is used to select a file /usr/man/man<arg1> and the second argument is
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the keyword to search for.
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Articles can be paged through in the forward direction using
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the Enter key. Presentation of an article may be interrupted by the
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intr (Delete by default, may be changed with stty) key or the Q key.
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When in menu mode the menu will be presented each time an article is
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complete. The intr or Q key will exit from the menu back to the
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command line prompt.
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Man files from the net:
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For better or for worse, a decision seems to have been made
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that the man system of future versions of Minix will be the
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traditional Unix one, with a single file for each entry. This will
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make maintenance of the man files easier, but it does away with the
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menu display that beginners to Unix will probably find easier to use.
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Most of the man pages you get from the net will need to be
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processed in the following way to be used with the Minix 1.5 man
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command:
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1. Convert each article to a flat ASCII file. (Maybe not as easy as it
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should be if Minix is the only Unix you have, since most of these
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files cannot be fully converted using only the Minix 1.5 nroff -man
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command.)
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2. Add a line to the top of each article that begins with a pound sign
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"#" followed by all the names by which you want to retrieve that
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article.
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3. Concatenate all the files for section 1 together and name the
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resulting file man1, man2, etc. Put all of them in the directory
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/usr/man.
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Two caveats: don't throw away the original tarred files you
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get from the net, since when you update to Minix 1.6 or later you'll
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need to have separate files for each topic. Also, be aware that the
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man files that have been posted to the net may actually be based on
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Minix 1.6.16 or a later version in which the action of each command
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may no longer be the same as in Minix 1.5.10.
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