Subject: Re: bug#9939: Problems with the SIZE description in man pages for <ls> and <du>

From: abdallah clark <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:27:53 -0600

Dear Paul and others:

Thank you for your suggestions, but not only are you not realizing
what it means to be a newbie, you have also missed the point of my
communication. Not only patience but also the consideration of others
new to Linux ought to be in play.

The SIZE notation is confusing and I have no idea how to "fix" it,
since I do not understand what was intended and none of you have
explained that. Instead, you have launched into a flurry of
complications that do not help resolve that issue. I am not playing
games with anyone. It is not my job to do more than report bugs or
other problems, as the man pages indicate.

Your earlier comment about the MB or M or MiB was a circular argument
as well. If M equals MiB, then UNIX/Linux is not applying the
conventions.

If you cannot clarify something that is already written and cannot
refer me to any material, anywhere that will clarify what the SIZE
paragraph is saying, then please do not attempt to assign to me the
task of rewriting the SIZE paragraph or any other part of the <man ls>
material. That is a task for an intermediate or advanced user, not a
newbie.

All the best to you and yours,

         Abdallah Clark

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Paul Eggert <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On 11/09/11 18:08, abdallah clark wrote:
>> In terms of being able to follow up with GIT DIFF, you need to
>> remember that I am a newbie.
>
> Ah, sorry, in that case, how about if you simply take the
> output of the command "ls --help", edit it to improve
> it, and send us your fixes.
>
> Thus, you can use the following shell command:
>
> ls --help > lshelp.txt
>
> to create the file lshelp.txt.  Then edit that file to be the way
> that you like.  Then send us the output of the following shell command:
>
> ls --help | diff -u - lshelp.txt
>
> so that we can see what edits you made.
>
> If you want to improve the documentation for other commands,
> you can repeat the recipe by using them in place of "ls".
>
> Please bear in mind that small changes are easier for us to
> review, so you probably want to avoid the temptation to
> reformat the text.  The goal is to send us the wording changes
> that you'd like to see.
>
> It's probably best to start with one command, and maybe a simpler
> one, so that we can iron out the procedure without having to spend
> a lot of time on blind alleys.
>