Authors of version 2.52
==================== Changes in man-pages-2.52 ====================Released: 2007-05-29
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"But damn it, these man pages are a mess!"
Contributors
------------
The following people contributed notes, ideas, or patches that have
been incorporated in changes in this release:
Apologies if I missed anyone!
Global changes
--------------
Most of the changes below are about bringing greater consistency
to manual pages, including reducing the side wange of .SH
Section headings.
Typographical or grammatical errors have been corrected in several
places.
Various pages
mtk
Make 'manual' component of .TH line "Linux Programmer's Manual"
Reason: consistency.
Various pages
mtk
Changed date in .TH line into form YYYY-DD-MM.
Reason: consistency.
Various pages
mtk
Some .SH header lines were made into .SS lines. (One of the aims
here is to reduce the number of non-standard .SH lines.)
Various pages
mtk
Change title .SH sections named "NOTE" to "NOTES", in some cases
also changing the location of the section within the page.
Reason: consistency.
Various pages
mtk
Commented out .SH AUTHOR sections; the right place for
documentation authoriship sections is usually comments at the
top of the page source.
Various pages
mtk
Changed .SH HISTORY to .SH VERSIONS.
Reason: in many cases, HISTORY was being used to describe
Linux/glibc version innformation, as was already done for
VERSIONS sections in other pages.
Various pages
mtk
Removed HISTORY section, or moved it as a subsection or paragraphs
under another section e.g., NOTES.
Reason: there are too many arbitrary section (.SH) names, and
a HISTORY section never was consistently used across Linux
manual pages.
Various pages
mtk
Moved SEE ALSO section to be last section on the page
Reason: consistency -- and this where SEE ALSO should be!
Various pages
mtk
Relocated GLIBC NOTES as subsection under NOTES
Reason: reduce number of arbitrary section (.SH) names.
Various pages
mtk
Relocated LINUX NOTES as subsection under NOTES
Reason: reduce number of arbitrary section (.SH) names.
Various pages
mtk
Renamed some "AVAILABILIY" sections to "VERSIONS".
Reason: consistency.
Various pages
mtk
Renamed some "DIAGNOSTICS" sections to "RETURN VALUE".
Reason: consistency.
getopt.3
tzselect.8
mtk
s/\.SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES/.SH ENVIRONMENT/
Reason: consistency.
intro.2
select.2
sysctl.2
bsearch.3
dlopen.3
envz_add.3
fmtmsg.3
getgrent_r.3
getgrouplist.3
getpwent_r.3
getutent.3
hsearch.3
rtime.3
strptime.3
tsearch.3
vcs.4
wordexp.3
mtk
s/return 0/exit(EXIT_FAILURE)/ in main() of function example
program.
Reason: consistency.
mprotect.2
select_tut.2
dlopen.3
getgrent_r.3
getopt.3
getpwent_r.3
hsearch.3
select_tut.2
tsearch.3
mtk
Use symbolic constants (EXIT_SUCCESS, EXIT_FAILURE) in calls
to exit().
Reason: consistency.
access.2
chown.2
lseek.2
open.2
read.2
utmp.5
mtk
Renamed RESTRICTIONS section to NOTES, or moved text in a
RESTRICTIONS section under existing NOTES section.
Reason: consistency, and reduce number of arbitrary section (.SH)
names.
Changes to individual pages
---------------------------
capget.2
mtk
s/\.SH FURTHER INFORMATION/.SH NOTES/
dup.2
mtk
s/\.SH WARNING/.SH NOTES/
kill.2
Renamed LINUX HISTORY section to LINUX NOTES, and relocated
within page.
select_tut.2
mtk
Relocated example program and made its .SH title "EXAMPLE".
sigaltstack.2
mtk
Move code example into its own EXAMPLE secton.
sigreturn.2
mtk
s/\.SH WARNING/.SH NOTES/
setuid.2
mtk
s/\.SH "LINUX-SPECIFIC REMARKS"/.SH LINUX NOTES/
shmget.2
mtk
Remove section about effect of fork()/exec()/exit(); shmop.2
contains the same text, and it only needs to be said once.
shmop.2
mtk
Minor rewording under DESCRIPTION.
daemon.3
mtk
Minor wording and formatting changes.
encrypt.3
mtk
Removed statement that glibc unconditionally exposes declarations
of encrypt() and setkey(), since portable applications must
use <unistd.h> and define _XOPEN_SOURCE to obtain the declarations
of setkey() and encrypt(). Adjusted example program accordingly.
mkstemp.3
mtk
Slight rewording.
LDP.7
mtk
Minor wording and formatting changes.
man.7
mtk
Substantial rewrite, revising and extending the discussion
about desired conventions for writing pages.
There will be further updates to this page in the next few
man-pages releases.