Brian T. Schellenberger wrote:
> Mike Corbeil wrote:
> >
> > Brian T. Schellenberger wrote:
> >
> > > In the vain hope of forestalling a number of "you moron" followups, I
> > > will point out that I saw the recent posting explaining that there's a
> > > "y" option that does exactly this. In my defense, it's not in the "man"
> > > page.
> >
> > man or documentation page bug.
> >
> > y option for what? I just checked the man pages for tar and bzip2 and also
> > didn't see any mention of a y option.
>
> Yes, exactly.
>
> tar xvyf foo.tar.bz2
>
> extracts and unzips in a single step.
>
> Cool, eh? Undocumented, alas.
I found some documentation yesterday which gave such examples and I believe that was
in the LDP web site. This means that it's documented, except not locally. However,
people can mirror the LDP, or download it, or copy it, to have it accessible
locally, instead of always needing to hook up to the internet to get to the LDP.
Wasn't sure how much I'ld use the documentation, but copied it to my local /usr/doc
directory, organized the documentation by categorizing into directories to speed up
searches, and it's been useful. Now, I just bring up kfm, as long as I'm using kde,
and browse, locally.
The only potential problem with that is needing to check once in a while to see if
documentation has been added or changed, but most of the documentation is dated,
which helps to make the checking fairly quick to do.
I agree that it's quicker to use the extra option with tar, and that it may be
more useful the way you described. I just haven't had the need to bother, and also
wonder if the option is also available with tar on Unix, like Sun, ... One can
always try and if it doesn't work, then read the man page, but what if it works,
but does something different? Am not sure and I don't have a Unix system available
to check. Just some thoughts; although, I don't think they'ld change the meaning or
effect of an option for a Unix command, for this reason.
The other aspect of copying the LDP and such documentation locally is (besides
making sure not to infringe upon copyrights) creating a script or tool to provide
one fairly consistent user interface and which searches man pages, info, and all
other local documentation files, to locate documentation. This would create one
integrated documentation search and display user interface, albeit the various
types of documentation would be presented according to what ever tool or type of
tool is otherwise used to view the documentation when it's accessed more directly,
or directly. I have most of such a script already completed, but presently have
higher priorities and need to create a gui front end, before this tool is finished.
Also, maybe there already is such a tool, but I'm not aware of one; therefore, this
tool is agenda'd, among other things which are also deferred due to higher or more
urgent priorities.
Without a tool like this, a user must try man, info, and if these fail, then bring
up a browser, or use rgrep, to search through the many HOWTOs, FAQs, and other
copied documentation. One integrated u.i. seems like a nicer approach. Then,
whether people copy documentation from the internet or not, is up to each to
choose.
Documentation is definitely nice to have, especially up to date documentation, and
free documentation puts icing on the cake.
mike
