Hello everyone,
I'm still fairly new to plan9 after only a little over a week of exposure and
intense absorption
into that world. At this point, I'm coming up for air in order to see what the
long time prospects
are. To be honest, I'm not sure, in particular with respect to its life outside
a research
environment. I do though very much want it to live beyond. In that spirit and
the spirit that
comes along as one reads Rob Pike's paper on plumbing, I offer the below.
The man pages are an exotic tool for people unfamiliar with them. However, to
those who are
familiar, they provide crucial and concise information for the subject on hand.
The man
pages within the plan9 system by and large follow the traditional format. There
are a
few differences in comparison to those in the unix or linux world, but really
not that many.
What I want to suggest here is a section for plumbing, or rather PLUMBING as
the man
pages might list it. I suggest this in the context of the subject line.
Indoor and outdoor plumbing; what is that about? The door as I am using it in
the previous
terms refers to the "door" of ones home, or $home here. I think that most
people do not
have a blueprint for the plumbing in their home, or if one exists then it
possibly has been
misplaced. In particular, they often do not hand a plumber a blueprint if they
call one to
come and fix their plumbing. However for plumbing for public spaces and
environments
that go beyond the context of serving one individual or one family, a blueprint
or some
form of documentation is needed. At the least, it is very beneficial for anyone
needing
to work with the plumbing.
Okay, so the analogous situation here is the plumbing in the plan9 system that
is out (of)
doors, outside $home's door. It needs documentation for sensible use. That
documentation
at the least provides a meeting point for conventions in the use of plumbing.
However, it
also provides needed structure regarding connecting points and flow of
information in the
form of messages. One difficulty is where to put that information in regards to
the man pages,
i.e. which ones. Since the command is not necessarily the source of the
plumbing rules
that connect with the process associated with the command, it is difficult to
require the
implementors of a command to be responsible for that section. Consequently, one
problem
to be included in the proposal is what is the basis for including plumbing
information. How
does one decide to put a section in a man page that one did not originally
author? It becomes
a problem of how to deal with community living.
I assume that if the original designers of plan9 had included said section in
the organization of
the man page that they would have done an excellent job of defining the form of
that section.
However, it doesn't look as if that section was included. So if it is to be
included, then it is up to the
present community to figure out what should be in it. Obviously some may think
that section
is unnecessary. For some, possibly many, man pages that is probably true.
However for
others I think differently. At this point, it can be treated as a bit of an
exercise as to what the form
of that section should contain and how it should be presented. The spirit of
the man pages seem
to be (for me) that of mathematical common sense.
So there it is. Any thoughts?
-jeff
