Re: FW: What goes where?
Re: FW: What goes where?
- Subject: Re: FW: What goes where?
- From: Randy Ford <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 03:01:57 -0600
On Friday, February 28, 2003, at 08:00 PM, //aSaM// wrote:
Most of X is documented in the manual. Use "man X" as the starting
point. While it doesn't give information about every file, it does
about many. It gives pointers based on topics that will lead to the
others.
The manual is terse, and not written to be entertaining. However, it
is the best (and many times only) reference documenting Unix systems
that most people have. The more times that people are referred to
it, the more likely they are to read some and start understanding
instead of just copying what other people write. Of course, we still
need to give people answers to their questions, or they will just go
away and never learn.
As a 'newbie' I'd like to add some things to this discussion. Although
I'm not new to UNIX this is the first time I have root power and can
explore the OS down any route my curiosity takes me. Even being a UNIX
user it has been difficult for me on my own to find the right place to
start finding the information for myself.
X11 is a complex place to start exploring. As a user on most systems,
people aren't likely to choose X to start a journey since the details
will be neatly hidden away behind prepackaged layers. The fact that we
are using a beta X server and windows manager on a non-native system
has sent people where they would likely never have gone on a native X11
system, such as Linux or Solaris.
I've spent more than a day looking for the right starting place for
some topics. If I have somebody to ask, I do. Unix is so big that
there are still new jungles out there for all of us. Most of us are
happy to point out a trail that we've seen, and hope there will be
somebody to do the same for us.
For example, only by reading here do I find out that to get the manual
pages I was looking for I needed man X. I was trying man X11!
We use X11 on this list because Apple has greatly confused the issue by
calling their operating system Mac OS X. I don't recall seeing, much
less using, the term "X11" in this way before this list. However, here
I use "X11" to mean The X Windowing System, and "OS X" to mean Apple's
latest OS.
<rant>
Now, the problem here caused by Apple: they have not created/updated
the documentation about how they have modified the system for the
beta. Of course, it is a beta!
</rant>
Hopefully by the time Apple releases the final version of X11 all the
information about where to look for information like man X will be in
the most obvious place a Mac user looks; in the Mac OS X Finder help
menu and using the Help Viewer application.
I've generally not been able to get OS X questions answered from
information in the Help Viewer. Even more irritating, it want to go
across the internet for much of the basic info. Since I'm using an
iBook, I was often not connected. What a pain.
The manual is not really specific to X11. It documents the whole Unix
system. Apple should provide easy access to users of Terminal.app
today.
Learning the shell well will also lead to understanding the rest of
Unix. A path through learning an using the shell will lead to
learning about the file system, basic security, process creation and
completion, signals, and streams. This is a good start along the
path to grok Unix and ultimate happiness.
That's assuming every Mac user wants to be a full time UNIX admin. The
reason most of use Macs in the first place is because we don't really
want to geek out too much but just want to get on with productive and
creative stuff. We just want to get on with using the UNIX
applications but we have to get them all installed ourselves not like
before when we just used to email the admin and tell him what we
wanted to use. You're speaking as a UNIX user not as a Mac OS X user,
they are not the same thing, a Mac OS X user does not spend all day
reading manual pages to do basic things like learning about security
to set up a fire wall, they just go to the preferences and press a
button. Is this not what Mac OS X is about ;)
I was speak to someone wanting to learn the Unix side. I understand
that most Mac users don't want this. Most other Unix users don't want
it either. In fact, most Unix programmers don't want to learn any more
about it than they need to. In a room of fifty Unix programmers, one
to three are likely to really take apart X11 and their X-server and
windows manager to fully understand how it works and how to customize
everything. At least forty won't know that there is a difference
between the windows manager and the X server. (This last may be
changing due to open source providing a plethora of windows managers,
but probably not.) Most programmers will think of X as being CDE,
OpenLook, Gnome, KDE, or whatever other system they are using.
I appreciate and support the fact that Apple works very hard to limit
complexity (choices) in their GUI. Their work on X11.app shows that
they are trying to do the same with X. However, I believe that the
deeper understanding should be available and accessible to those who
desire it.
I would also caution about beginning too early to customize the
system. Many here who want customizations only want them because
they've grown used to other systems working that way. (I can't count
the number of times I've seen customizations to make the shell look
more like MS-DOS. It reminds me of people using #defines in C to
make it look like Pascal.) If you don't require a change to the
default, try it for a while. Then you'll have some basis for making
a decision.
Again you are speaking as a UNIX user. If we wanted a standard look we
would be using Windoze but the reason we use Mac is because it has
always been the OS for the ultimate customizers and we want our OS to
be as different as we are :)
I don't see this. To me, Macs have fewer customizations available than
do other systems. This lack of complexity is one of the strong
arguments for using it. I admit, though, that I was out of the Mac
world for a long time. I always wanted one, but couldn't quite justify
it until it was clear that OS X was going to be Unix based (and was
really oing to be delivered.)
Unix with X Windows is the OS for the ultimate customizer.
randy.
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