Re: Mail. Mail! Mail?

[Bernard Leak <bernard at brenda-arkle dot demon dot co dot uk>]

Dear List,

Firstly, thanks to Bob Proulx for the helpful pointer to the Debian
search widget.  This is a genuinely useful-looking tool.  How pleasing!
But unless he thinks this is another thing I should "just know about",
it's worth documenting *somewhere*.  I don't suggest that the GCC
documentation should necessarily mention the Debian web-site
(indeed, it is surely better not to): but the GCC documentation left
me stuck over "Mail". with nowhere to go.

I think I haven't explained myself enough to Bob.  I find myself wondering
how much would be "enough", and deeply, sincerely hope that this will be,
because I don't intend to add any more explanation!

I tried quite hard to find out the answers I needed before I first posted
my question.  I don't see why this has to be construed as a proud terror
of exposing my ignorance.  I didn't want to take up other people's time,
and solicit their help, merely from laziness - especially as other people
had obviously not experienced so much difficulty.  I have not complained
that my difficulties should have been eliminated before I encountered
them.  I am saying that I don't want anyone else to have them.  Drawing a
complete blank would have been merely annoying.  In fact, I came up with
useless false positives requiring tedious work to eliminate, and then I was
completely stuck.  I wasted a significant amount of time not finding out
what I needed to know.

How difficult does it have to be to find something out before adding it
to the documentation looks like a benefit to other people?  Is forcing me
(and any others in the same position later) to ask an unnecessary
question something to be encouraged, as an exercise in communal
living, or something?  Do you all have too much time on your hands?
Is there any information you would like to delete from the documentation
on the same principle?

I'm not asking anyone to guess at things I might possibly not know and
explain them in the documentation.  I am asking for two *specific* things
(which in fact I did not know) to be explained in the documentation,
because brute-force searching in "the obvious places" doesn't produce
the Right Thing, but can and does throw up misleading clues to the Wrong
Thing.  "Mail" in particular is not the name of a GNU utility, but "mail"
is.  The results submission script uses "Mail".  My distribution has
"mailx", which completes the set of three!  How confusing and inconsistent
does it have to be before it seems like a candidate for documentation?
Why is it overkill to note (if "Mail" is not found) that another name might
work instead?  That was my suggestion: what's the objection?  That it's
too helpful?  Do you rot13 all your man pages?

I saw no reason to mention in my first posting that I'd already tried to
find "Mail" in the desktop command reference I happen to have to
hand ("Linux in a Nutshell", 4th Edition).  I have now gone back to
check: the documentation for "mail" mentions neither "Mail" nor "mailx",
and I found no references to "Mail" or "mailx" in the index.  I have
now gone over the "sendmail" documentation (apparently for Big
Sendmail).  Zack Weinberger's first reply to me is still the only
indication I've ever noticed that there is more than one thing called
"sendmail".

If you have a lot of time to waste you might try finding "Mail" in
the Linux Documentation Project tree.  You do have a lot of time
to waste, don't you?  I mean, it *might* be in there. Somewhere.
Yes, I tried this at length before I gave up and made my posting.
Again, I didn't think there was much point in mentioning it.

Does Bob think that if I don't know that "Mail" = "mail" I am roughly
equally likely not to know about "cat" or "grep"?  If so, he is clearly
looking down on me from a position of such altitude as to be quite
unable to recognise the problems the rest of us have.  With grinding
explicitness: even if I mysteriously knew about neither, I would not
have needed to post a question to the mailing list.  Leaving aside
"Linux in a Nutshell" - which of course documents both "cat" and
"grep" - I set myself an exercise this morning of trying to find
these widgets by name, with nothing but the name (and the fact
that they are commands of some sort found on UN*X-type systems).
"grep" was easy - the top-level reference page for GNU grep was
the first non-sponsored match from AltaVista.  "cat" required a bit
more sloshing around, to separate it from references to furry
Superior Beings, but not much.  But all this is besides the point.

If you think that there is a better place for the needed information,
by all means suggest it.  If you think it's already documented
somewhere accessible, please tell me (and maybe refer to it in
the GCC documentation!).  "Grope around in the Debian
distribution using their search tool" is a usable solution, but
not what I would call adequate documentation. "Run and find out"
is a good response in many cases, but this does not apply to "Mail",
because (go back to Start, do not pass "Go", do not collect £200,
rinse and repeat).

"You ought to have this already" is an expression of astonishment,
rather than a suggestion (though one may infer from it that looking
again harder might help - in my case, it didn't).  "You ought to know
this already" is merely a slap in the face.

Yours in the ranks of death (but not before),
Bernard Leak.
--
"Before they made me, they broke the mould."