[schilytools] man page sections

[Robert Clausecker]

Hi Friedhelm,

Am Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 05:37:00PM +0200 schrieb Friedhelm Mehnert:
> Looking at the various man pages I find that these sometimes use
> "strange" section numbers like "1L".
>
> [...]
>
> This is what "man man" says on Linux:
> 
> > The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by
> > the  types  of  pages they contain.
> >
> >        1   Executable programs or shell commands
> >        2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
> >        3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
> >        4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
> >        5   File formats and conventions, e.g. /etc/passwd
> >        6   Games
> >        7   Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
> >        8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
> >        9   Kernel routines [Non standard]

This is just the historical order.  It has always been this way all the
way back to research UNIX.

> Solaris used to have different sections, but they switched a long time
> ago to be compatible with the above systems.

Solaris never had different sections and did not switch their ordering.
The only addition is that SunOS has subsections for items specific to
certain components of the system.  This convention is used by other
software, too.

> I think the man pages should be changed to conform to the above if possible.

I don't think so.

> Also I noticed, that Jörg has put programs and daemons that require root
> like "btcflash" or "rscsi" into section 1 and titled it "User Commands".
> I think these should go into section 8 instead.

Neither btcflash nor rscsi require super user privileges.
They merely require the same access to SCSI devices cdrecord(1)
and friends require.  On many systems, such access is given using
fine-grained privileges or through group membership.

The commands do not perform systems tasks either.  rscsi(1) in
particular is pretty useful as a user command, allowing you to send
SCSI commands in text form, e.g. from a shell script.

Yours,
Robert Clausecker
 
-- 
()  ascii ribbon campaign - for an 8-bit clean world 
/\  - against html email  - against proprietary attachments