From owner-freebsd-doc Mon Jul 10 23:40:10 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (freefall.FreeBSD.ORG [204.216.27.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E324B37BCB2 for ; Mon, 10 Jul 2000 23:40:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gnats@FreeBSD.org) Received: (from gnats@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.9.3/8.9.2) id XAA76667; Mon, 10 Jul 2000 23:40:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gnats@FreeBSD.org) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 23:40:03 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200007110640.XAA76667@freefall.freebsd.org> To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Cc: From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai Subject: Re: docs/18792: date man page has misleading description of -r option Reply-To: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org The following reply was made to PR docs/18792; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai To: Ben Smithurst Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org, bobj@atlantic.net Subject: Re: docs/18792: date man page has misleading description of -r option Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 08:38:18 +0200 -On [20000711 04:01], Ben Smithurst (ben@FreeBSD.org) wrote: >The man page now says: > > -r Print out the date and time that is seconds from the Epoch > (00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970; see time(3)). > >I'm not sure when this was changed, but is that any better? I don't >really like it because it's not valid English really, although it makes >more sense in the real manpage because _seconds_ is underlined. Still, >I'd prefer the following: >--- date.1 2000/06/28 09:20:06 1.39 >+++ date.1 2000/07/11 01:32:00 >@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ > .Nm date > .Op Fl jnu > .Op Fl d Ar dst >-.Op Fl r Ar seconds >+.Op Fl r Ar sec > .Op Fl t Ar minutes_west > .Oo > .Fl v [snip] > -r Print out the date and time that is _sec_ seconds ... > >Is that ok? If Jeroen (my mentor) approves this and no-one objects then >I'll commit it. If people think the current text is fine I'll just >close the PR. Yeah, the change might make it more clear for non native english speakers (and probably the english ones as well). It looks clearer to me. But don't forget that: [8:36] [asmodai@daemon] (356) $ date ? date: illegal time format usage: date [-nu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... [-f fmt date | [[[[[cc]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.ss]] [+format] You cannot change the function arguments (.Fa) around for sake of clarity, since it would now conflict with the shown arguments. =) I am sure you can find another wording for the paragraph which solves this riddle. -- Jeroen Ruigrok vd Werven/Asmodai asmodai@[wxs.nl|bart.nl|freebsd.org] Documentation nutter/C-rated Coder BSD: Technical excellence at its best The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project So take a look at me now, well there's just an empty space... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message