slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/09/1254211&mode=thread
When you type help it pops up a nice ncurses screen of all the different commands available on linux systems, briefly what they do and a link that can take them to a simplified, easy to read page of advanced things to do with the command. Parent Re:The help command by j2brown Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 09:42AM Re:The help command by Mixel Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 09:56AM Re:The help command by mwing Score:3 Tuesday March 09, 09:56AM 2 replies beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command Score:4, Funny by Skinny Rav 181822 on Tuesday March 09, 09:57AM 8509085 What Linux needs is a MS-DOS 6 style help command. When you type help it pops up a nice ncurses screen of all the different commands available on linux systems, briefly what they do and a link that can take them to a simplified, easy to read page of advanced things to do with the command.
Theres no reference or link to the rmdir command Theres no warning about destructive behavior rm -r etc Of course, it tells you to lookup an info page Now, thats just for a simple example. Imagine a newbie scratching his head while looking at the man page for complex command like grep or find. Basically the man system is only useful if you already know 95 of what the man page is trying to tell you - and even there it falls down as a reference work because all the real information is in the info system. Im pointing this out because a lot of times Unix Oldtimers point new users to the man system even on this thread, probably without realizing exactly how horrid it is on a GNU/Linux system. It is not at all accessible to newbies, and probably should just be chucked in its current form. Re:The help command by Trejkaz Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 08:58PM Re:The help command by Tiro Score:1 Wednesday March 10, 04:11AM 3 replies beneath your current threshold. The wealth of information in a decent man page is like a revelation from heaven to one who has had to make sense of DOS HELP, but a single massive spew of everything known about some complex program is a little overwhelming even with an outstanding pager to help. VMS HELP documents are hierarchial and are usually chunked fairly nicely. Where VMS HELP falls down is in full-text searching, though that may have been improved since they took my VMS boxes away.
Re:The help command by Espectr0 Score:3 Tuesday March 09, 01:48PM 2 replies beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command by iabervon Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 08:55PM Re:The help command by ghakko Score:2 Wednesday March 10, 03:37AM 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command by the_duke_of_hazzard Score:3 Tuesday March 09, 01:24PM Re:The help command by Wormholio Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 01:25PM Re:The help command by mlush Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 04:57PM 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command by Tribbin Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 09:23AM Re:The help command Score:5, Funny by Moderation abuser 184013 on Tuesday March 09, 09:47AM 8508993 Apropos?
Re:Only on Slashdot by Anonymous Coward Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 03:17PM Re:Only on Slashdot by Mad Marlin Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 03:54PM Re:Only on Slashdot by Skorpion Score:1 Wednesday March 10, 07:45AM Re:Only on Slashdot by next1 Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 07:43PM 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command by PowerBert Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 09:24AM Re:The help command Score:5, Funny by oingoboingo 179159 on Tuesday March 09, 09:30AM 8508870 And itd probably be double that if you incorporated some kind of search facility too. Type in help disk space and get a hit on the df command, for instance. How about a little animated bash$ command prompt which jumps up when you hit F1, or which politely asks It looks like youre composing a shell script.
Dilbert jokingly tells the PHB that in order to get more customers they should start a massive spamming campaign. When Dilbert goes home, Dogbert says You look like someone who was just put in charge of his own sarcastic suggestion. Parent Re:The help command Score:5, Funny by seanmeister 156224 on Tuesday March 09, 10:05AM 8509150 even just a sign for those wanting to get on with the job. Parent Re:The help command by frodo from middle ea Score:3 Tuesday March 09, 10:42AM Re:The help command by gnu-generation-one Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 04:18PM Re:The help command by srinivas_rc Score:1 Tuesday March 09, 09:35PM 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command Score:5, Insightful by HidingMyName 669183 on Tuesday March 09, 09:35AM 8508907 I suspect that new users find Unix/Linux challenging due to historical reasons. Two problems that stick out are command naming conventions and command output. It is an unfortunate artifact of Unix history that some of the commands are poorly named. The Help command did exist in Unix, but it was the help system for sccs too bad there wasnt sccs -help or some such convention instead. There are a few other pet peeves of mine, grep might be better named search, etc. For example when we grep on a file and dont find the pattern, grep does not generate any output. From a programmer point of view that is definitely the right thing especially since these commands are used as filters in a pipelined fashion, however, from a user centric point of view there may be an expectation of a report that the pattern was not found. Im pretty used to the Unix/Linux way of doing things, but new users are not.
After the initial horror at what I had done wore off, my younger brother and sister got used to the new system. Four months later I discovered they were both making extensive use of the command line. By the time I moved out I had my mother using pine over ssh to read her email. Most of the trouble of Linux is the inertia related to not wanting to learn new things and not being technically difficult. Parent Re:The help command by Nurseman Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 10:34AM Re:The help command Score:5, Interesting by A nonymous Coward 7548 on Tuesday March 09, 10:44AM 8509534 I loaded Linux on a Windows 31 machine for my kids to get mail had a domain name so they could all have their own mail accounts and login;
Re:The help command Score:5, Funny by JavaLord 680960 on Tuesday March 09, 01:43PM 8511084 By the time I moved out I had my mother using pine over ssh to read her email. Most of the trouble of Linux is the inertia related to not wanting to learn new things and not being technically difficult. When I was in high school I used to visit my grandmother in a nursing home all the time. She didnt know how to use Windows or E-Mail so I just gave her an old linux box. Re:The help command by jsebrech Score:2 Tuesday March 09, 03:48PM 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:The help command Score:5, Interesting by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 09, 10:11AM 8509203 > Command output is problematic since users often expect feedback. For > example when we grep on a file and dont find the pattern, grep does not > generate any output.
Stdidiot is where you tell the user verbose output of what you are doing including positive affirmation! Of course one should be able to setenv STDIDIOT/dev/null to turn that off. Moreover, maybe you re-direct it into a pipe that a consolish app could tail? Then a little ticker window on the desktop closes the loop for those needing positive responses? Ive been living in Unix for more than a dozen years and most of the time I like the tell me about it iff there are problems philosophy, but a centralized ticker might occasionally be handy. As a first cut one could basically write a layer that takes the stuff spewed forth by most utilities when -verbose is kicked in and peel it out to stdidiot. If -verbose is thrown on the cmd line, then stdidiot is echoed to stdout too. Re:The help command Score:5, Insightful by zymurgy_cat 627260 on Tuesday March 09, 09:38AM 8508933 Id wager that computer literacy amongst people whove tried Linux would be twice what it is today if when you typed help foobar bash would perform a man foobar if foobar wasnt a builtin command. And itd probably be double that if you incorporated some kind of search facility too. Type in help disk space and get a hit on th...
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