5 ms·

Unix Text Processing Transcription Project (2004)

34 points by beefhash 8y ago

macintux 8y ago
I stumbled upon this book early in my career, somehow managed to lose track of it, bought an old copy on Half.com, still haven't done much with it but glad to have it. Really glad people feel strongly enough to recover this treasure. Will be interested to see a revised edition.
- Tor3 8y ago
  It looks like a revised edition never came. The page is from 2004 after all, and nothing more seems to have happened.
jonjacky 8y ago
A memorable appreciation of this book appeared here a while ago: "Whenever I read this book again, I am reminded of how much UNIX know-how is probably being lost to new generations that are steered away from learning the foundations that still make up their operating systems. ..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118155
- MisterTea 8y ago
  > "Whenever I read this book again, I am reminded of how much UNIX know-how is probably being lost to new generations that are steered away from learning the foundations that still make up their operating systems. ..." From the look of things, most of it. Just look at the decision to use markdown (md) for github instead of the ubiquitous troff which is installed by default on every *nix machine to date so you can read man pages. Because of that decision, you now have people suggesting we write the man pages in md. Throw out the old tools because no one knows how to use them so instead we'll waste time rewriting everything using new tools. Instead, the time would be better spent learning the old tools and be done with it. Lunacy. We can thank NIH syndrome, the new norm for these blunders. This NIH problem is a result of the historical machismo culture surrounding engineering and development. Namely these two awful quirks: n00bs think they can do it better than the gurus because the gurus tell the n00bs to RTFM because "back in my day all we had was $man intro". The gurus should be teaching and guiding the n00bs to properly understand these systems and the tools already provided. This allows us to build knowledge on a solid foundation, focus on real problems, learn from past mistakes, and avoid reinventing the wheel because of ignorance and hubris. Lastly: You want to rediscover the simplistic beauty of Unix? Hack around in plan9. 9front is the most up-to-date fork so grab an iso from them. They have an odd culture, mostly trollish, but it's there to keep the know it all n00bs away (the salty guru syndrome is strong in them). I've been playing with troff on plan9 and using a tool called dpost which formats troff to postscript. Simple and effective formatting which makes me question the decision to use things like md.
  - beefhash 8y ago
    > From the look of things, most of it. Just look at the decision to use markdown (md) for github instead of the ubiquitous troff which is installed by default on every *nix machine to date so you can read man pages. This is particularly unfortunate because md -> man page converters always use the -man set of macros. -mdoc could encapsulate a lot of semantic information[1,2], which also factors into apropos(1) on mandoc[3], but obviously that isn't possible to reasonably capture from Markdown. [1] https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man7/mdoc.7 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man7/mdoc.7 [2] cf. kristaps's "Practical UNIX Manuals", https://manpages.bsd.lv/mdoc.html https://manpages.bsd.lv/mdoc.html [3] https://man.openbsd.org/apropos#Macro_Keys https://man.openbsd.org/apropos#Macro_Keys
  - wodenokoto 8y ago
    No wonder nobody went with troff. Checking out the Troff homepage, wikipedia page, the GNU page for troff and scanning the manual, I still haven't come across example code (markup?) of troff, but it sounds like something closer to latex than a markup language. While markdown lacks good formal definition, it is easy to read and easy to write. I picked up markdown faster than it took me to give up looking for example code for troff.
    - MisterTea 8y ago
      I hate to say it but you're exhibiting bias in your post. How much time did you actually spend looking? What search terms did you use? While I'll agree that md looks easy at first, troff isn't much more difficult if you put the time into it (humans are lazy, I get it). Here's one I found in under a minute by searching for 'how to write linux man page using troff': https://liw.fi/manpages/ https://liw.fi/manpages/ and of course the official manual which has a nice command table in the beginning: https://www.troff.org/54.pdf https://www.troff.org/54.pdf Also of note: troff supports macros so the man page formatting won't be found in the troff manual because they are part of the man macro package.
      - wodenokoto 8y ago
        > How much time did you actually spend looking? Like I said, more time than it took me to learn markdown. > Here's one I found in under a minute by searching for 'how to write linux man page using troff' Of course I was not searching for "How to make man pages". Why would I do that, when parent said this was a better alternative to markdown. > Also of note: troff supports macros so the man page formatting won't be found in the troff manual because they are part of the man macro package. Which again makes it pretty reasonable why places like github chose markdown over troff.

34 points by beefhash 8y ago

I stumbled upon this book early in my career, somehow managed to lose track of it, bought an old copy on Half.com, still haven't done much with it but glad to have it. Really glad people feel strongly enough to recover this treasure. Will be interested to see a revised edition.

Tor3 8y ago
It looks like a revised edition never came. The page is from 2004 after all, and nothing more seems to have happened.

jonjacky 8y ago

A memorable appreciation of this book appeared here a while ago: "Whenever I read this book again, I am reminded of how much UNIX know-how is probably being lost to new generations that are steered away from learning the foundations that still make up their operating systems. ..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118155

MisterTea 8y ago
> "Whenever I read this book again, I am reminded of how much UNIX know-how is probably being lost to new generations that are steered away from learning the foundations that still make up their operating systems. ..." From the look of things, most of it. Just look at the decision to use markdown (md) for github instead of the ubiquitous troff which is installed by default on every *nix machine to date so you can read man pages. Because of that decision, you now have people suggesting we write the man pages in md. Throw out the old tools because no one knows how to use them so instead we'll waste time rewriting everything using new tools. Instead, the time would be better spent learning the old tools and be done with it. Lunacy. We can thank NIH syndrome, the new norm for these blunders. This NIH problem is a result of the historical machismo culture surrounding engineering and development. Namely these two awful quirks: n00bs think they can do it better than the gurus because the gurus tell the n00bs to RTFM because "back in my day all we had was $man intro". The gurus should be teaching and guiding the n00bs to properly understand these systems and the tools already provided. This allows us to build knowledge on a solid foundation, focus on real problems, learn from past mistakes, and avoid reinventing the wheel because of ignorance and hubris. Lastly: You want to rediscover the simplistic beauty of Unix? Hack around in plan9. 9front is the most up-to-date fork so grab an iso from them. They have an odd culture, mostly trollish, but it's there to keep the know it all n00bs away (the salty guru syndrome is strong in them). I've been playing with troff on plan9 and using a tool called dpost which formats troff to postscript. Simple and effective formatting which makes me question the decision to use things like md.
- beefhash 8y ago
  > From the look of things, most of it. Just look at the decision to use markdown (md) for github instead of the ubiquitous troff which is installed by default on every *nix machine to date so you can read man pages. This is particularly unfortunate because md -> man page converters always use the -man set of macros. -mdoc could encapsulate a lot of semantic information[1,2], which also factors into apropos(1) on mandoc[3], but obviously that isn't possible to reasonably capture from Markdown. [1] https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man7/mdoc.7 https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man7/mdoc.7 [2] cf. kristaps's "Practical UNIX Manuals", https://manpages.bsd.lv/mdoc.html https://manpages.bsd.lv/mdoc.html [3] https://man.openbsd.org/apropos#Macro_Keys https://man.openbsd.org/apropos#Macro_Keys
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  No wonder nobody went with troff. Checking out the Troff homepage, wikipedia page, the GNU page for troff and scanning the manual, I still haven't come across example code (markup?) of troff, but it sounds like something closer to latex than a markup language. While markdown lacks good formal definition, it is easy to read and easy to write. I picked up markdown faster than it took me to give up looking for example code for troff.
  - MisterTea 8y ago
    I hate to say it but you're exhibiting bias in your post. How much time did you actually spend looking? What search terms did you use? While I'll agree that md looks easy at first, troff isn't much more difficult if you put the time into it (humans are lazy, I get it). Here's one I found in under a minute by searching for 'how to write linux man page using troff': https://liw.fi/manpages/ https://liw.fi/manpages/ and of course the official manual which has a nice command table in the beginning: https://www.troff.org/54.pdf https://www.troff.org/54.pdf Also of note: troff supports macros so the man page formatting won't be found in the troff manual because they are part of the man macro package.
    - wodenokoto 8y ago
      > How much time did you actually spend looking? Like I said, more time than it took me to learn markdown. > Here's one I found in under a minute by searching for 'how to write linux man page using troff' Of course I was not searching for "How to make man pages". Why would I do that, when parent said this was a better alternative to markdown. > Also of note: troff supports macros so the man page formatting won't be found in the troff manual because they are part of the man macro package. Which again makes it pretty reasonable why places like github chose markdown over troff.