job control
Mark Crispin
MRC%PANDA at sumex-aim.arpa
Wed Apr 16 12:23:07 AEST 1986
Barry -
The online documentation needs a good KWIC index, and the
hardcopy documentation needs a real index, e.g.:
TERMINAL
hung terminals, fixing 844
interconnection 223
reading parameters 111, 143(fn), 432
setting parameters 113-116, 124, 322
using terminals as a device 53-55
Basically, *every time* some technique is described, it
should get an index marker. I have no idea if troff or nroff or
whatever is in vogue can do this; if not dump it and use a real
document formatter such as Scribe.
Look in any well-organized reference manual index or even
better, look at any history book with indices and footnotes.
Such things can be done; it just takes a person with more than a
6th grade education in writing skills and the English language.
Yes, many hackers are functionally illiterate, but I know that
isn't the universal case.
There really isn't much of a comparision between the
TOPS-20 documentation and Unix. There's too much TOPS-20
documentation (it needs 5 strong men to carry all of it), and
very little of it is available online. Most TOPS-20 programs are
intrinsically self-documenting, which helps. And, equally
important, most TOPS-20 manuals have a REAL index! Since the
Unix documentation is so small, it should be possible to index
the entire documentation set.
-- Mark --
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