UNIX doc...

[BostonU SysMgr]

Ok, I for one have noticed quite a rash of letters (some from myself!)
from people who seem to be otherwise quite competent with software and
manuals. All of these seem to be a general inability to figure out new
features on UNIX systems, so far:  Semaphores, sxt's, bitmap (me, 7300,
caused panics), tty ioctls etc. The only way *I* figured out sxt's was
to read shl.c, the trick with the pipe I wouldn't have figured out
so easily.

Suggestion: what are the chances of seeing sources to running,
reasonably useful programs using (especially) new features being
delivered with systems? It's nice when you have a source distribution,
though some things aren't very much used or take a while to track down
(quick, which piece of software in my SYSV.2 source distribution has a
good example of semaphores in it?...buzz..time's up, I dunno either,
grep semop */*/*/*).

I think we have entered a very peculiar state of the haves and the have
nots: Either you get source distribution or you don't get one C program.*
I have mentioned before on this list that I really don't think it would
send AT&T into title 11 to always include the sources to login.c and a
few other key programs with binary distributions to give a site a chance
to adapt to their needs (ya know, like different password schemes or
'can s/he login now' or other things that developers may not have
thought of.) Here's another need.

Developers?

* Ok, maybe one or two, like twinkle in the curses manual, and thanks!

	-Barry Shein, Boston University