/etc/motd summary

[John Baldwin]

On Monday, September 08, 2014 08:24:00 PM Warren Block wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> > On 8 September 2014 17:46, Brooks Davis <brooks at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 05:25:31PM -0700, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> >>> for maximum bikeshed: what about adding a 'motd' command that, I
> >>> dunno, re-displays the motd? :P
> >> 
> >> How would someone who didn't know about /etc/motd ever find that?
> > 
> > Putting "Type 'motd' to see this information again" in the motd.
> 
> Or leave it the way it is, /etc/motd is just a file that is displayed,
> but instead of dumping it to stdout, interpret some kind of markup in
> it.
> 
> That's relatively high overhead considering the layout will still be
> limited to 80x24.  We'd probably be better off leaving it as is and
> moving most of the information to a man page, say support(1), which is
> mentioned by /etc/motd.

Yes.  You can use formatting if you have a 'man welcome'.  That might be the 
best way to provide a local, formatted copy of the proposed "welcome" page 
from earlier.  You could even create a very simple 'welcome' wrapper script 
that runs 'man welcome' so that in the motd you just have to say "run the 
welcome command".  No need for having to worry about having to figure out how 
to separate arguments from the command that way (which is the the problem we 
have now that requires double spaces since all the examples are commands that 
take arguments like 'man man').  For a command with no arguments you don't 
have to do that I think.

-- 
John Baldwin