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Re: linux (unix) programming



On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, guy keren wrote:

> 1. documentation.There are various aspects that lack descent 
> documentation in the unix (and linux) world. i'm talking about free
> documents. linux has a lot of system installation documents, and on-line
> manuals, but i think it does not have programmers manuals (perhaps except
> the kernel hackers guide). i once wrote a document about
> programming client/server applications with sockets on linux (or unix in
> general) including example programs. it sucks in two ways:
> 1. my english. i've read it again lately, and it bothered even me.
> 2. it's incompleteness.
> 
> (it uses nroff basic macros - written by hand). i'd be willing to supply
> this document (it's about 20 printer pages long + a few programs) to
> anyone who things such documents will benefit the 'community' and who'se
> willing (and able) to work on my english. furthermore, i'd be happy to
> find some steady companionship, so we could write similar documents about
> issues like "using signals under linux/unix", "interprocess
> communications under linux/unix", etc. i know there are books about these
> matters, but why not make public domain documents that will help people
> get started without having to pay so much ? there are various available
> documents about various subjects. lets try to make something more
> complete. who wants to join ?

Well, I'll check your English if you want. This type of project sounds
very interesting, but there's one thing I don't understand. Do you plan
to make copies of the O'Reilley books? There's a lot of Unix documentation
out there on all subjects, in very high-quality books. Interprocess
communication and signals under Linux (more precisely, under Unix) are
covered well in several books. Do you plan to recreate these?

> 2. If you remember, at the one before last linux IL meeting (#2?), i
> tried to demonstrate a graphical user interface for C programming written
> in tcl/tk. due to a bug in the demonstration, i couldn't show too much of
> it. i would assume similar applications (please don't just say that lucid
> emacs is a ready programmers environment) would make linux more
> attractive to the 'community'. so we might want to develope various small
> utilities and try to push them into being part of the standard linux
> distributions - linux seems still weak in this area, or work on one large
> project in this area (hmm, anyone wanna help working on this development
> environment?)

It's a shame you weren't in the last meeting. I demonstrated a little
idea of mine of GUIing Linux by providing Tcl/Tk procedures that do
standard stuff for you. I already have a very nice (and working!)
thing that can setup PPP (sets up /etc/resolv.conf, a ppp dialup script...)
easier than Trumpet Winsock can. My vision was having a Slackware-standard
X-Windows tool from which you can manage every aspect of your system
without knowing too much about Unix. I'm not sure if I have the time
to develop this to that stage, but it's an interesting idea.

Shay

--
Shay Rojansky, roji@cs.huji.ac.il                 Finger for PGP public key
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