Greetings, kcott. I would like to start this note with an enormous apology, to you, and others whom might have struggled the way you apparently did, untangling the way I presented my proposal. I'm terribly sorry. While I do know better. I'm afraid I was a bit keyed up at the time I wrote it. Rather that walk away from it for an hour, and come back to it with a clear head, and set of eyes.
That said. For the sake of clarity;
Your assessment is correct -- congratulations, it wasn't easy. ;)
I have, and have since heavily hacked, the original script FreeBSD currently uses. It has... just a sec, I'll check...better, I'll list them..never mind. The copy I
maintain provides man pages for 250 versions of Operating systems. If I get the
<readmore> right, you can see them all below:
HP-UX 11.22
HP-UX 11.20
HP-UX 11.11
HP-UX 11.00
HP-UX 10.20
HP-UX 10.10
HP-UX 10.01
SunOS 5.10
SunOS 5.9
SunOS 5.8
SunOS 5.7
SunOS 5.6
SunOS 5.5.1
SunOS 4.1.3
CentOS Linux/i386 3.9
CentOS Linux/i386 4.8
CentOS Linux/i386 5.4
CentOS Linux/i386 5.5
SuSE Linux/i386 4.3
SuSE Linux/i386 5.0
SuSE Linux/i386 5.2
SuSE Linux/i386 5.3
SuSE Linux/i386 6.0
SuSE Linux/i386 6.1
SuSE Linux/i386 6.3
SuSE Linux/i386 6.4
SuSE Linux/i386 7.0
SuSE Linux/i386 7.1
SuSE Linux/i386 7.2
SuSE Linux/i386 7.3
SuSE Linux/i386 8.0
SuSE Linux/i386 8.1
SuSE Linux/i386 8.2
SuSE Linux/i386 9.2
SuSE Linux/i386 9.3
SuSE Linux/i386 10.0
SuSE Linux/i386 10.1
SuSE Linux/i386 10.2
SuSE Linux/i386 10.3
SuSE Linux/i386 11.0
SuSE Linux/i386 11.1
SuSE Linux/i386 11.2
SuSE Linux/i386 11.3
FreeBSD 9-current
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.3-stable
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.2-stable
FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.4-stable
FreeBSD 7.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.4-stable
FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.5-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.6.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.5.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.8-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.1.7.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.1.6.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 1.1.5.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 1.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 1.0-RELEASE
OpenBSD 2.0
OpenBSD 2.1
OpenBSD 2.2
OpenBSD 2.3
OpenBSD 2.4
OpenBSD 2.5
OpenBSD 2.6
OpenBSD 2.7
OpenBSD 2.8
OpenBSD 2.9
OpenBSD 3.0
OpenBSD 3.1
OpenBSD 3.2
OpenBSD 3.3
OpenBSD 3.4
OpenBSD 3.5
OpenBSD 3.6
OpenBSD 3.7
OpenBSD 3.8
OpenBSD 3.9
OpenBSD 4.0
OpenBSD 4.1
OpenBSD 4.2
OpenBSD 4.3
OpenBSD 4.4
OpenBSD 4.5
OpenBSD 4.6
OpenBSD 4.7
OpenBSD 4.8
OpenBSD 4.9
OpenBSD 5.0
NetBSD 1.0
NetBSD 1.1
NetBSD 1.2
NetBSD 1.2.1
NetBSD 1.3
NetBSD 1.3.1
NetBSD 1.3.2
NetBSD 1.3.3
NetBSD 1.4
NetBSD 1.4.1
NetBSD 1.4.2
NetBSD 1.4.3
NetBSD 1.5
NetBSD 1.5.1
NetBSD 1.5.2
NetBSD 1.5.3
NetBSD 1.6
NetBSD 1.6.1
NetBSD 1.6.2
NetBSD 2.0
NetBSD 2.0.2
NetBSD 2.1
NetBSD 3.0
NetBSD 3.1
NetBSD 4.0
NetBSD 4.0.1
NetBSD 5.0
NetBSD 5.1
2.8 BSD
2.9.1 BSD
2.10 BSD
2.11 BSD
386BSD 0.0
386BSD 0.1
4.3BSD Reno
4.3BSD NET/2
4.4BSD Lite2
Linux Slackware 3.1
Red Hat Linux/i386 4.2
Red Hat Linux/i386 5.0
Red Hat Linux/i386 5.2
Red Hat Linux/i386 6.1
Red Hat Linux/i386 6.2
Red Hat Linux/i386 7.0
Red Hat Linux/i386 7.1
Red Hat Linux/i386 7.2
Red Hat Linux/i386 7.3
Red Hat Linux/i386 8.0
Red Hat Linux/i386 9
CentOS Linux/i386 3.9
CentOS Linux/i386 4.8
CentOS Linux/i386 5.4
CentOS Linux/i386 5.5
SuSE Linux/i386 4.3
SuSE Linux/i386 5.0
SuSE Linux/i386 5.2
SuSE Linux/i386 5.3
SuSE Linux/i386 6.0
SuSE Linux/i386 6.1
SuSE Linux/i386 6.3
SuSE Linux/i386 6.4
SuSE Linux/i386 7.0
SuSE Linux/i386 7.1
SuSE Linux/i386 7.2
SuSE Linux/i386 7.3
SuSE Linux/i386 8.0
SuSE Linux/i386 8.1
SuSE Linux/i386 8.2
SuSE Linux/i386 9.2
SuSE Linux/i386 9.3
SuSE Linux/i386 10.0
SuSE Linux/i386 10.1
SuSE Linux/i386 10.2
SuSE Linux/i386 10.3
SuSE Linux/i386 11.0
SuSE Linux/i386 11.1
SuSE Linux/i386 11.2
SuSE Linux/i386 11.3
SuSE Linux/i386 ES 10 SP1
XFree86 2.1
XFree86 3.3
XFree86 3.3.6
XFree86 4.0
XFree86 4.0.1
XFree86 4.0.2
XFree86 4.1.0
XFree86 4.2.0
XFree86 4.2.99.3
XFree86 4.3.0
XFree86 4.4.0
XFree86 4.5.0
XFree86 4.6.0
XFree86 4.7.0
X11R6.7.0
X11R6.8.2
X11R6.9.0
X11R7.2
X11R7.3.2
X11R7.4
ULTRIX 4.2
OSF1 V4.0/alpha
OSF1 V5.1/alpha
Plan 9
Minix 2.0
Unix Seventh Edition
Darwin 1.3.1/x86
Darwin 1.4.1/x86
Darwin 6.0.2/x86
Darwin 7.0.1
Darwin 8.0.1/ppc
OpenDarwin 20030208pre4/ppc
OpenDarwin 6.6.1/x86
OpenDarwin 6.6.2/x86
OpenDarwin 7.2.1
In fact I even have the UNIX (VAX) tapes. I only listed them all here for clarity.
Point being, while I don't know how many OS versions FreeBSD currently maintains. I'm sure it's at least ~150. So I guess what I'm trying to get to here is, given that there are so many different OS's and versions. Not everyone will choose the same one.
So it's a matter of which man pages the Monks are willing, or want to support. And then, clarify how to access them. No? Consolidation is somewhat easy, given that modern Macintosh uses BSD as their base. Then there's Linux. While there are seemingly a gazillion different "dists" the commands are almost identical. But different from BSD. Windows, I'm afraid, is out of the question. Unless you want to consider MinGW. In which case Red Hat Linux pretty much covers it. So essentially that leaves 2;
* POSIX (UNIX/BSD)
* NONPOSIX (Linux)
I have no idea how FreeBSD munges their URI's, and I clearly have no idea how the Monks manage the shortcut. But I keep mine simple
/man/? and
/man? return the same. If I have to ferret the data from infopages
/man/?query=
Having had some time to think about it. It seemed to me, that perhaps a good way to handle the differences might be as simple as
[lman://] for Linux, and
[man://] for UNIX/BSD
But, then again, I have no idea how the Monks arrive at the shortcut, nor how I will know which (UNIX, or Linux) man page I'll get, when using the shortcut. If it's of any help, and the Monks even wish to pursue such an endevour (man v man). I could set up a domain that does nothing but serve man/info pages. I've been hosting for well over 20yrs, and ran BBS's before that. So I guess what I'm suggesting, is if the Monks think it'd be helpful, I could host a sort of "Monks man pages" site. That did nothing more than provide man/info pages for PerlMonks. Just thought it might simplify this matter. As they would be guaranteed some measure of control over the content returned.
Other than that. I can't think of any other better way to describe it. I dearly hope I was clearer, more concise this time. :)
As always, best wishes, and thank you very much for all the time, and effort you put into your reply, kcott.
--Chris
#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use Perl::Always or die;
my $perl_version = (5.12.5);
print $perl_version;