> Kai Henningsen wrote:
> >
> > acahalan@cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan) wrote on 10.11.99 in
> > <199911100713.CAA31619@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>:
> >
> > > Andries Brouwer writes:
> > >
> > > > Linus writes:
> > > >
> > > > Just describe it the way it works.
> > > >
> > > > Yes, I did that further down the same page, describing the BSD vfork
> > > > and the reasons for it. But the POSIX description is what programmers
> > > > that wish to produce portable programs have to use. In a portable
> > > > program vfork only has disadvantages - strictly speaking it cannot be
> > > > used at all. Maybe I should add a separate LINUX DESCRIPTION.
> > >
> > > These are Linux man pages, are they not?
> >
> > So?
> >
> > When I look at a man page, *at least* 50% of the time I'd like to know if
> > this is in any way Linux specific (and if so, in what way), and what
> > exactly are the portable properties.
> >
> > I may then decide to rely on non-portable properties, if those make a
> > significant difference to what I'm trying to do.
>
> Traditionally, unix man pages (or at least the ones that _used_ to come
> with GNU/Linux systems)
Only the latter. I've _seen_ traditional, pre-Linux man pages; while they
were great compared to, say, DOS help (which didn't even exist at the
time), they weren't much compared to what a typical Linux distribution
has. They certainly didn't have a concept of portability ("What, you want
to use other vendor's offerings?!"). The best you could expect was, very
seldom, some kind of hint about USD-BSD differences.
Traditional Unix didn't have the market of M$, but they sure had a lot of
the attitude.
MfG Kai
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