On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:00:55 +0100
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>I am not going to criticise Microsoft for that, or IBM for realising
>that what their customers wanted was not computers, but a software
>supplied service to enable their businesses to perform better.

I have no quibble with that... if that's what they stuck too, but it's the
endless deckchair moving (with no actual functional improvement) that winds
the office girls up where I used to work. It wastes their time trying to find
out where everything has moved to. Since the became a 'Microsoft' office,
they've had to hire a specialist to keep sorting out all their problems.
I was still working there at the time, and chugging along quite happy with the
same machine that I'd started with 15 years previously.

The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until I pointed
out that *none* of the development software I used had a Microsoft equivalent.

--
Basic

On 26/10/2021 15:36, Folderol wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:00:55 +0100
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I am not going to criticise Microsoft for that, or IBM for realising
>> that what their customers wanted was not computers, but a software
>> supplied service to enable their businesses to perform better.
>
> I have no quibble with that... if that's what they stuck too, but it's the
> endless deckchair moving (with no actual functional improvement) that winds
> the office girls up where I used to work. It wastes their time trying to find
> out where everything has moved to. Since the became a 'Microsoft' office,
> they've had to hire a specialist to keep sorting out all their problems.

Like C++, coders have to find ever more reasons to justify their
existence - look at Poettering foir example.

"Creeping featurism" is a prime example.

Take this version of thunderbird. its *full* of fatures I never use,
whilst the ones that I did use, have been removed.

And don't even go near font behaviour. It is clear that whoever wrote
the basic code left Mozilla years ago. And what font you get depends on
at least 30 different switches none of whose behaviours is actually
documented...

> I was still working there at the time, and chugging along quite happy with the
> same machine that I'd started with 15 years previously.
>
I would be completely happey to be just using Qualcomms Eudora Mail
circa 1998. If there was a Linux port.

> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until I pointed
> out that *none* of the development software I used had a Microsoft equivalent.
>

Probably likes te EU too

"All desktops must be harmonised!"
"Why?"
"Er....because?"
--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:00:55 +0100 The Natural Philosopher
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>I am not going to criticise Microsoft for that, or IBM for realising
>>that what their customers wanted was not computers, but a software
>>supplied service to enable their businesses to perform better.
>
> I have no quibble with that... if that's what they stuck too, but it's
> the endless deckchair moving (with no actual functional improvement)
> that winds the office girls up where I used to work. It wastes their
> time trying to find out where everything has moved to. Since the became
> a 'Microsoft' office, they've had to hire a specialist to keep sorting
> out all their problems.
> I was still working there at the time, and chugging along quite happy
> with the same machine that I'd started with 15 years previously.
>
> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until I
> pointed out that *none* of the development software I used had a
> Microsoft equivalent.

Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 26/10/2021 15:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
> Probably likes te EU too
>
> "All desktops must be harmonised!"
> "Why?"
> "Er....because?"

Still lying about the EU, I see ...

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:53:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Like C++, coders have to find ever more reasons to justify their
> existence - look at Poettering foir example.
>
Ugh. Tried it, didn't like it. Now I stick to ANSI C and, increasingly,
Java, which is very backward compatible (stuff I wrote using Java 1.4
still compiles without any changes in a Java 8 environment.
> "Creeping featurism" is a prime example.
>
I've managed to avoid that so far: (Fedora Linux with the XFCE desktop,
Apache, minimal PHP and Brave or Firefox for web stuff, Pan for news,
Evolution for email. A combination of awk and bash covers virtually
everything else I need to do.

--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:

>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until I
>> pointed out that *none* of the development software I used had a
>> Microsoft equivalent.
>
>Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?

Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time), initially
running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think it still is).

It's almost all bespoke software we built up ourselves. The arrival of the
Arduino made life a lot easier for us - program a chip and test the code, pop
it out and stick a resonator on it and instant *cheap* dedicated controller.

--
Basic

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:53:14 +0100
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>- look at Poettering foir example

Do we have to!
:)

--
Basic

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:49:44 +0100, Folderol wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>
>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until
>>> I pointed out that *none* of the development software I used had a
>>> Microsoft equivalent.
>>
>>Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>
> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time),
> initially running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think it
> still is).
>
Cool. In the early '80s I was doing a lot of work on SWTPC multi-user
kit, based on MC6809 chips and running under the Uniflex OS. That was the
heyday of 4GL languages, so most of what we did was small-business
accounting systems written using the Sculptor 4GL. One of those boxes
with a 5" hard drive, couple of terminals and a printer could easily
support anything a family business needed.

--
--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:10:05 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:49:44 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>
>>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until
>>>> I pointed out that *none* of the development software I used had a
>>>> Microsoft equivalent.
>>>
>>>Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>>
>> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time),
>> initially running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think it
>> still is).
>>
>Cool. In the early '80s I was doing a lot of work on SWTPC multi-user
>kit, based on MC6809 chips and running under the Uniflex OS. That was the
>heyday of 4GL languages, so most of what we did was small-business
>accounting systems written using the Sculptor 4GL. One of those boxes
>with a 5" hard drive, couple of terminals and a printer could easily
>support anything a family business needed.
>
Interesting. That predates me quite a bit. Work wise, I was up to my armpits in
PCBs with acres of CMOS chips and a smattering of TTL for the 'fast' bits -
narry a processor in sight.

Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s, *loved* the
in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)

--
Basic

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100
Folderol <general@musically.me.uk> wrote:

> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s,
> *loved* the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)
>
That was continued with an ARM assembler in Archimedes BBC Basic.
--
Joe

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 20:26:52 +0100
Joe <joe@jretrading.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100
>Folderol <general@musically.me.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s,
>> *loved* the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)
>>
>That was continued with an ARM assembler in Archimedes BBC Basic.

I Know, and wasn't it an absolute beauty? Small *memorable* instruction set
that could be applied across all 15 registers :)

Sadly, not true with current ARM cores :(

--
Basic

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100, Folderol wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:10:05 -0000 (UTC)
> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:49:44 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
>>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>>
>>>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well,
>>>>> until I pointed out that *none* of the development software I used
>>>>> had a Microsoft equivalent.
>>>>
>>>>Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>>>
>>> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time),
>>> initially running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think
>>> it still is).
>>>
>>Cool. In the early '80s I was doing a lot of work on SWTPC multi-user
>>kit, based on MC6809 chips and running under the Uniflex OS. That was
>>the heyday of 4GL languages, so most of what we did was small-business
>>accounting systems written using the Sculptor 4GL. One of those boxes
>>with a 5" hard drive, couple of terminals and a printer could easily
>>support anything a family business needed.
>>
> Interesting. That predates me quite a bit. Work wise, I was up to my
> armpits in PCBs with acres of CMOS chips and a smattering of TTL for the
> 'fast' bits - narry a processor in sight.
>
> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s, *loved*
> the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)

That was after my final stint on a relatively big system: The BBC's dual
ICL 2966 setup.

This lived in a large room in Sheppards Bush containing two independent,
roughly equal sized systems interconnected with a cabinet looking very
much like the switch box in a railway shunting yard. One machine was the
production system, the other being for development and hot standby. The
switch system meant that if 'prod' died, we all got kicked off 'dev',
'prod's disks were swapped over to 'dev', which then rebooted as the
production system. IIRC that meant about 30-40 minutes downtime - fast
enough because the 2966s supported admin, accounting and
(broadcast)program planning and production rather than anything that was
live on air. This sort of crash didn't happen often. I was there for just
under 3 years only remember being booted off 'dev' a couple of times.

Everything we did there was written in COBOL and used IDMSX databases.

VME/B was a nice OS - by and large it 'just worked'. Every program had
two names (long and short), so 'deletefile(filename)' did what you might
expect and 'xf(filename)' was the short name for the same program. The
name construction systax was totally consistent (unlike the Unix/Linux
naming mess) and the OS had a built-in manpage capability, so once you
understood it you could think:

"I need a command to do this unusual thing I've not tried before. If it
exists its name should be, say 'addfileindex'".

So you'd type that into a terminal, hit the 'screen prompt' button, and
if there was such a command the screen would fill with a summary
description and a set of named argument fields and any default values
already set. If the command didn't exist you'd get shown a list of
similar command names.

If the command was found all you needed to do was fill in the arguments
you wanted and hit ENTER. Job done!

--
--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:50:28 -0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:10:05 -0000 (UTC)
>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:49:44 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
>>>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well,
>>>>>> until I pointed out that *none* of the development software I used
>>>>>> had a Microsoft equivalent.
>>>>>
>>>>>Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>>>>
>>>> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its
>>>> time),
>>>> initially running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think
>>>> it still is).
>>>>
>>>Cool. In the early '80s I was doing a lot of work on SWTPC multi-user
>>>kit, based on MC6809 chips and running under the Uniflex OS. That was
>>>the heyday of 4GL languages, so most of what we did was small-business
>>>accounting systems written using the Sculptor 4GL. One of those boxes
>>>with a 5" hard drive, couple of terminals and a printer could easily
>>>support anything a family business needed.
>>>
>> Interesting. That predates me quite a bit. Work wise, I was up to my
>> armpits in PCBs with acres of CMOS chips and a smattering of TTL for
>> the 'fast' bits - narry a processor in sight.
>>
>> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s, *loved*
>> the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)
>
> That was after my final stint on a relatively big system: The BBC's dual
> ICL 2966 setup.
>
> This lived in a large room in Sheppards Bush containing two independent,
> roughly equal sized systems interconnected with a cabinet looking very
> much like the switch box in a railway shunting yard. One machine was the
> production system, the other being for development and hot standby. The
> switch system meant that if 'prod' died, we all got kicked off 'dev',
> 'prod's disks were swapped over to 'dev', which then rebooted as the
> production system. IIRC that meant about 30-40 minutes downtime - fast
> enough because the 2966s supported admin, accounting and
> (broadcast)program planning and production rather than anything that was
> live on air. This sort of crash didn't happen often. I was there for
> just under 3 years only remember being booted off 'dev' a couple of
> times.
>
> Everything we did there was written in COBOL and used IDMSX databases.
>
> VME/B was a nice OS - by and large it 'just worked'. Every program had
> two names (long and short), so 'deletefile(filename)' did what you might
> expect and 'xf(filename)' was the short name for the same program. The
> name construction systax was totally consistent (unlike the Unix/Linux
> naming mess) and the OS had a built-in manpage capability, so once you
> understood it you could think:
>
> "I need a command to do this unusual thing I've not tried before. If it
> exists its name should be, say 'addfileindex'".
>
> So you'd type that into a terminal, hit the 'screen prompt' button, and
> if there was such a command the screen would fill with a summary
> description and a set of named argument fields and any default values
> already set. If the command didn't exist you'd get shown a list of
> similar command names.
>
> If the command was found all you needed to do was fill in the arguments
> you wanted and hit ENTER. Job done!

Meant to add - if you've been to TNMOC recently you'll probably have seen
the ex-Tarmac 2966 there. That, or at least as much of it as is on
display in the museum, is less than half the size of either of the BBC
systems, which had a lot more disk installed, as well as tape drives and
controllers for quite a large terminal network.

--
--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 26 Oct 2021 at 20:50:28 BST, Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid>
wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:10:05 -0000 (UTC)
>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:49:44 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
>>>> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well,
>>>>>> until I pointed out that *none* of the development software I used
>>>>>> had a Microsoft equivalent.
>>>>>
>>>>> Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>>>>
>>>> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time),
>>>> initially running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think
>>>> it still is).
>>>>
>>> Cool. In the early '80s I was doing a lot of work on SWTPC multi-user
>>> kit, based on MC6809 chips and running under the Uniflex OS. That was
>>> the heyday of 4GL languages, so most of what we did was small-business
>>> accounting systems written using the Sculptor 4GL. One of those boxes
>>> with a 5" hard drive, couple of terminals and a printer could easily
>>> support anything a family business needed.
>>>
>> Interesting. That predates me quite a bit. Work wise, I was up to my
>> armpits in PCBs with acres of CMOS chips and a smattering of TTL for the
>> 'fast' bits - narry a processor in sight.
>>
>> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s, *loved*
>> the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)
>
> That was after my final stint on a relatively big system: The BBC's dual
> ICL 2966 setup.
>
> This lived in a large room in Sheppards Bush containing two independent,
> roughly equal sized systems interconnected with a cabinet looking very
> much like the switch box in a railway shunting yard. One machine was the
> production system, the other being for development and hot standby. The
> switch system meant that if 'prod' died, we all got kicked off 'dev',
> 'prod's disks were swapped over to 'dev', which then rebooted as the
> production system. IIRC that meant about 30-40 minutes downtime - fast
> enough because the 2966s supported admin, accounting and
> (broadcast)program planning and production rather than anything that was
> live on air. This sort of crash didn't happen often. I was there for just
> under 3 years only remember being booted off 'dev' a couple of times.
>
> Everything we did there was written in COBOL and used IDMSX databases.
>
> VME/B was a nice OS - by and large it 'just worked'. Every program had
> two names (long and short), so 'deletefile(filename)' did what you might
> expect and 'xf(filename)' was the short name for the same program. The
> name construction systax was totally consistent (unlike the Unix/Linux
> naming mess) and the OS had a built-in manpage capability, so once you
> understood it you could think:
>
> "I need a command to do this unusual thing I've not tried before. If it
> exists its name should be, say 'addfileindex'".
>
> So you'd type that into a terminal, hit the 'screen prompt' button, and
> if there was such a command the screen would fill with a summary
> description and a set of named argument fields and any default values
> already set. If the command didn't exist you'd get shown a list of
> similar command names.
>
> If the command was found all you needed to do was fill in the arguments
> you wanted and hit ENTER. Job done!

Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me three
and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not including
'rm'.

--
Tim

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 17:06:36 -0400, TimS <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

> Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me three
> and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not including
> 'rm'.

On my Mageia 8 install, the man page for rm is from the coreutils-doc package.
The db used by apropos is updated based on installed man pages by the program
mandb. On my system that's run by /lib/systemd/system/man-db-cache-update.service
which is activated using rpm triggers after package install/uninstall.

So the coreutils-doc package or that distro's equivalent has to be installed, and
the mandb program run before rm will show up in the apropos output.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

On 26 Oct 2021 21:06:36 GMT, TimS wrote:

> Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me
> three and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not
> including 'rm'.
>
I'm not meaning to imply that VME/B was the only or even the first OS to
provide equivalents of 'man' or 'apropos'. However, it was certainly the
first [1] to wrap them into a single OS component that did the job of
both as well as acting as a graphical launcher for the command.

The only other OS I've used which had a similar graphical commmand
launcher was IBM's OS/400 - but where VME/B gave every command both a
long, semi-descriptive name, as well as an abbreviated one and both names
were regular enough to be guessable, OS/400 spoilt things by restricting
names to 9 characters, which tended to look like gibberish - the PL/1
compiler was called CRTPLIPGM - a very compressed version of 'CREATE PL/i
PROGRAM - and thre RPG3 compiler was called CRTRPGPGM.
[1] Unless Multics provided a similar search/prompt/launch tool.
George 3, the immediate prececessor to VME/B had neither an 'apropos'
nor a 'man' equivalent, just a shelf of A4 sized manuals.

--
--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 10/26/21 9:29 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 26/10/2021 04:59, 1p166 wrote:
>> On 10/25/21 2:23 PM, Folderol wrote:
>>> What has *any* of this got to do with the subject?
>>>
>>
>>    Absolutely NONE so far as I can tell ... even
>>    going back lots of generations of the thread.
>>
>>    I'm not sure there CAN be a war on general-purpose
>>    computing ... it's where all the special-purpose
>>    stuff is planned and written.
>>
>>    A war on power users maybe ... The Big Corporations
>>    badly want a total return to thin clients and
>>    servers so they can charge for every second. All
>>    online, all metered, all data harvested, all
>>    THEIRS.
>>
>
> Well its all rather emotive language about something that is shifting as
> the relative speed and power of networks and CPUs change over time.
>
> What is clear is that if you are maintaining a big app with thousands
> upon thousands of customers, its a damned sight cheaper to charge them
> rental and run the code on a server and let them access it via a browser
> or relatively thin client.
>
> Think support:
>
> "Your program doesnt work"
> "Have you tried ALT-F7->gribbulate?"
> "ALT- F7 doesnt work on your code!
> "Oh ah,  which versions do you have?"
> "How would I know"?
> "go alt-H->about"
> "Ok version 2.23"
> "We dont support that version you need to upgrade to 8.3 at least"
> "How do I do that?"
> "On Windows 10..."
> "I have windows XP"
> "Well sir, then you are fucked, We don't support that platform any more"
>
> How much easier to say 'as long as your browser is IE8 or more or
> Firefox 10 or more or... then you will be running the latest version of
> our code...
>
> ..on MacosX winders and Linux/BSD unix too.
>
> Most users of apps dont *want* to know how it works, they just want it
> to work, and if they are paying for it, to have a way to fix it when it
> doesn't.
>
> Renting time share on a cloud app is exactly what they love.
>
> Like contract hire on a car. Brand new car, all the features, service
> included for the first two years, no need to take responsibility for any
> of it....just pay the monthly fee.
>
> There are of course situations where you need local computing power and
> bandwidth, but they are fewer and fewer.
>
> Content generators
> Application designers
> OS maintainers
> Players of real time games.
> Highly specialised computationally intensive technical programs
>
>
> Everything else can by done via a web interface

Lots of Really BAD things too ...

And "Lots" seems to be growing exponentially.

So no.

"Convenience" is just TOO convenient for bad
actors these days.

But hey, I back up data 'offsite' to The Cloud ...
heavily pre-encrypted ....

On 10/26/21 9:44 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 14:29:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Renting time share on a cloud app is exactly what they love.
>>
> And, to give M$ their due, using Office365 applications is almost exactly
> that (even if some of the just plain folks using them still manage to
> screw up).

You KNOW they (and Russia) are plundering all that
online data, don't you ? Selling to the highest bidder ...

On 10/26/21 3:26 PM, Joe wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:32:58 +0100
> Folderol <general@musically.me.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> Dipped my toes in the water with a BBC Master in the late 80s,
>> *loved* the in-line assembler in BBC BASIC :)
>>
> That was continued with an ARM assembler in Archimedes BBC Basic.

Commodore (briefly) made an updated VIC-20, the C-16,
that included a built-in assembler. Black box with
four big function keys. It was fun. Gave it away
alas ....

On 26-10-2021 23:06, TimS wrote:
> Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me three
> and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not including
> 'rm'.

On MacOS (~BSD) it gives more than 20 pages because it seems to treat
the keywords as OR-ed and "file" is ubiquitous. Two pages for just
"apropos remove" and in both versions it includes on page two (because
alphabetically) :

remove(3) - remove directory entry
removefile(3), removefileat(3), removefile_state_alloc(3),
removefile_state_free(3), removefile_state_get(3),
removefile_state_set(3) - remove files or directories
removexattr(2), fremovexattr(2) - remove an extended attribute value
rm(1), unlink(1) - remove directory entries
rmdir(1) - remove directories
rmdir(2) - remove a directory file

On 27 Oct 2021 at 07:51:38 BST, "A. Dumas" <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

> On 26-10-2021 23:06, TimS wrote:
>> Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me three
>> and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not including
>> 'rm'.
>
> On MacOS (~BSD) it gives more than 20 pages because it seems to treat
> the keywords as OR-ed and "file" is ubiquitous. Two pages for just
> "apropos remove" and in both versions it includes on page two (because
> alphabetically) :

My Terminal windows are nearly 100 lines long.

--
Tim

On 27-10-2021 10:41, TimS wrote:
> On 27 Oct 2021 at 07:51:38 BST, "A. Dumas" <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 26-10-2021 23:06, TimS wrote:
>>> Unix has apropos. So I just tried "apropos remove file". This gave me three
>>> and a half screens-full of commands (so, some hundreds), but not including
>>> 'rm'.
>>
>> On MacOS (~BSD) it gives more than 20 pages because it seems to treat
>> the keywords as OR-ed and "file" is ubiquitous. Two pages for just
>> "apropos remove" and in both versions it includes on page two (because
>> alphabetically) :
>
> My Terminal windows are nearly 100 lines long.

Mine 80.

On 26/10/2021 16:20, Java Jive wrote:
> On 26/10/2021 15:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> Probably likes te EU too
>>
>> "All desktops must be harmonised!"
>> "Why?"
>> "Er....because?"
>
> Still lying about the EU, I see ...
>
Are you?

--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.

On 26/10/2021 18:49, Folderol wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:10:18 -0000 (UTC)
> Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:36:11 +0100, Folderol wrote:
>
>>> The guy was trying to persuade the boss to change mine as well, until I
>>> pointed out that *none* of the development software I used had a
>>> Microsoft equivalent.
>>
>> Interesting. Out of curiosity, what machine and OS was that?
>
> Bog standard single core Intel @ 1.6GHz (I think - good for its time), initially
> running debian Sarge. Running Stretch when I retired (think it still is).
>
> It's almost all bespoke software we built up ourselves. The arrival of the
> Arduino made life a lot easier for us - program a chip and test the code, pop
> it out and stick a resonator on it and instant *cheap* dedicated controller.
>
The attitude I took when running a company was that what we supported
was win 95 and its apps. You were welcome to use any other operating
system but you were on your own.

--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.

On 26/10/2021 16:20, Java Jive wrote:
> On 26/10/2021 15:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> Probably likes te EU too
>>
>> "All desktops must be harmonised!"
>> "Why?"
>> "Er....because?"
>
> Still lying about the EU, I see ...
>
"Harmonisation, also known as standardisation or approximation, refers
to the determination of EU-wide legally binding standards to be met in
all Member States."

https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/guidance/harmonisation

Look who is lying now...

--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.