[Info-vax] Radical command line suggestion

[mcleanjoh at gmail.com]

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 8:17:14 AM UTC+11, William Pechter wrote:
> In article <OMsYWfpbZtaX at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
> Bob Koehler <koehler at eisner.nospam.decuserve.org> wrote:
> >In article <f26e8302-e3f9-4fd9-bb73-9501fe886115 at googlegroups.com>,
> >johnwallaze4 at yahoo.co.uk writes:
> >> 
> >> man and info may have advantages (vs HELP) as tools for navigation. Maybe
> >> HELP needs an update then?
> >
> >   man has advantages?  On what planet?  man is the worst thing I've
> >   ever used, and is only barely tolerable if the X10 based xman gui
> >   is used instead of the terminal window man.
> >
> >   How many times did I have to re-rad vast sections of the ksh man
> >   page when a lower paragraph pointed to an earlier entity.
> >
> >   ARGHHHHHHHH.
> >
> 
> Man has its place but please, let's not thing it's better than context 
> sensitive help in VMS.
> 
> And I've been a Unix/Linux admin and trainer since '87 after I left DEC... 
> I've never found man better than help for new users.  And VMS will be looking
> for NEW USERS if it's going to succeed.
> 
> I like man as a quick options list, apropos is useful.  But full VMS help
> tells how to actually do an operation --  not just it's options.
> 
> If VMS help is reference book man is an infographic. 8-)
> 
> 
> Bill
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
> pechter-at-gmail.com  http://xkcd.com/705/

HELP was designed with mid-1970s computing in mind, meaning that it was 80 columns x 22 lines and because scroll back capability was rare, few if any Help pages exceeded those 22 lines. I'm not saying throw it away but I think it could be updated to suit modern techniques.

It should also be remembered that HELP has the advantage that most VMS commands correspond to plain English, for example RENAME rather than mv, SEARCH rather than grep and in my early days, EDIT was an editor, which is pretty obvious compared to a command like vi.

It's the use of meaningful command verbs (and the ability to abbreviate them) that makes VMS easy to work with.