the Linux man-pages as an educational tool

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Sam,

> Date: 2026-08-03 15:05:36+0100
> From: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>
>
> Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> writes:
> 
[...]
> > He doesn't need to have read every word of the glibc manual, but this
> > precise text he could have read it, because it was mentioned by Paul in
> > this thread (different subthread) prior (19:28 UTC) to his message, and
> > reviewed by me also prior (20:31 UTC) to his message (23:27 UTC).
> 
> I often reply as I go rather than reading all other emails around that
> time. I don't think you should assume he read those emails and
> deliberately neglected their contents.

Me too.  But eventually I respond to those other emails, and rectify
when that new information conflicts with something I said with
incomplete information.  So far, Collin didn't rectify.

> >
> > 	Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2026 14:28:33 -0500
> > 	From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> > 	Message-ID: <8715af47-867c-417a-8ef5-7b4b7ceb2c31@cs.ucla.edu>
> >
> > 	Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2026 22:31:59 +0200
> > 	From: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
> > 	Message-ID: <am-eAGL6OWqP9Yah@devuan>
> >
> > 	Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:27:21 -0700
> > 	From: Collin Funk <collin.funk1@gmail.com>
> > 	Message-ID: <875x1sp0h2.fsf@gmail.com>
> >
> > Also relevant is the fact that he accused me of "slowly" documenting
> > "personal preferences".  His wording implies that it wasn't there
> > before.  Maybe I misunderstood, though.  I'd be happy to rectify if I
> > was wrong.
> 
> I think he meant in general?

I don't interpret that.  I guess he can defend himself and clarify.

> > While he didn't need to know whether it was there before, it would be
> > good to make some effort to learn whether that was the case, before
> > making such a serious accusation.
> 
> I took it to be that you (as you've said yourself) have a different
> style from Michael and this does involve a more opinionated (you may not
> call it that) approach.  He's commenting on that being unfavourable to
> him.  I didn't think that was contentious, more that you see it as your
> duty wrt education.

I only see my style slightly different than Michael's, but not
necessarily in the sense of involving a more opinionated approach.  See
the other messages where I've shown how Michael had done the exact same
thing with strlcpy(3) a long time ago.

On reconsideration, and after researching what Michael really did,
I think I was wrong saying we have a different style at all.  I believe
we've had the same style.  We just had different topics of expertise.

Michael has had his own share of opinionated comments in manual pages.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>
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