4.12 Binary Formats

[Frank Leonhardt]

On 08/08/2013 01:11, Hugh O'Brien wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm a relatively long time user but was recently reading through the
> handbook to see if there was anything I could learn when I found this
> section:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/binary-formats.html
>
> It's an interesting read, but I must question the wisdom of including it in
> this stage of the handbook, where users are still new to the system. It
> stands apart from the more immediately practical knowledge in the previous
> pages and might be better suited to a page on writing your own programs.
>
> I just wanted to call attention to this,
>
> Thanks for the docs,
>
> Hugh
>

I think Hugh's got a really relevant point here.

UNIX is a programming environment (I've got a book right here written by 
one of its original writers that says this on the cover). Knowing about 
compilers and binary formats is pretty fundamental to make sense of 
this. However, these days there are non-programmers using it - ranging 
from WP users to web developers. They probably need to know how to 
install it, get the graphic desktop up and start up their word 
processor. EVERYTHING in the UNIX Basics section is probably way over 
their heads (would you really suggest vi to a newbie who was never going 
to touch the command line), and thus unnecessary.

Personally I think the UNIX handbook should stay as-is. The binary 
formats section could be moved to a different position, but that could 
be said for a lot of it. However, the intended audience, specified in 
the preface, could possibly do with a bit of tweaking to make it clear 
what kind of user it's aimed at.

When UNIX first appeared (when I first appeared, for that matter), 
computer users and administrators weren't that far apart on a technical 
level. The computer user would most likely be writing their own programs 
to solve their needs in 'C' or BASIC. Should the Handbook be thrown away 
and rewritten to cope with users with no interest in programming? Nope - 
it's the system handbook. Unfortunately it's appearing in the slot 
people might reasonably expect to find a User Guide. Appendix B2 does 
point readers (eventually) to a Users' Guide, but this is possibly even 
less helpful as a document!

I've been watching the PC-BSD project with interest, hoping it'd be a 
good desktop OS with user-land documentation, but it suffers from the 
same problems as the FreeBSD Handbook when it comes to modern users - 
except it does it using a graphical user interface.

Some people in the FreeBSD world want it to be a ubiquitous environment, 
running on desktop PCs, tablets, servers and everything. Evolve or die? 
Maybe.

Regards, Frank.