1692: Man Page - Revision history

42.book.addict: we don't use TOCs in comic pages

2025-10-23T05:05:28Z

we don't use TOCs in comic pages

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33 at 21:57, 22 October 2025

2025-10-22T21:57:51Z

CalibansCreations: /* Explanation */

2025-04-17T09:06:13Z

‎Explanation

172.71.218.76 at 11:27, 27 December 2024

2024-12-27T11:27:54Z

172.69.23.21: /* Explanation */

2024-03-18T18:01:26Z

‎Explanation

172.70.35.111: /* Explanation */

2023-08-02T23:25:00Z

‎Explanation

172.70.35.34: ANSEL does not predate ASCII. It is an ASCII extension.

2023-08-02T23:24:06Z

ANSEL does not predate ASCII. It is an ASCII extension.

172.71.147.141 at 04:26, 9 February 2023

2023-02-09T04:26:06Z

Natg19: /* Trivia */ cat

2022-08-09T02:06:17Z

‎Trivia: cat

Whoop whoop pull up: /* Table of flags */

2022-07-30T08:08:06Z

‎Table of flags

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:05, 23 October 2025
Line 9:		Line 9:

	==Explanation==		==Explanation==
−	~~{{TOC}}~~
	This comic shows a {{w\|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w\|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blerp blerp]". Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not extended explanations with tutorials as may be found in many hardcopy product manuals. Unfortunately, some Unix commands tend to be very bloated and include lots of optional behavior that is often irrelevant to the original intent of the command and can be done much more easily using shell features like piping and redirection, and thus the manpage grows to explain all of the features. This example exaggerates the obscurity and terseness found in many man pages, making fun of the typical style of the genre.		This comic shows a {{w\|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w\|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blerp blerp]". Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not extended explanations with tutorials as may be found in many hardcopy product manuals. Unfortunately, some Unix commands tend to be very bloated and include lots of optional behavior that is often irrelevant to the original intent of the command and can be done much more easily using shell features like piping and redirection, and thus the manpage grows to explain all of the features. This example exaggerates the obscurity and terseness found in many man pages, making fun of the typical style of the genre.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{comic
 | number    = 1692
 | date      = June 10, 2016
 | title     = Man Page
@@ Line 8: / Line 9: @@
 ==Explanation==
 This comic shows a {{w|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blerp blerp]". Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not extended explanations with tutorials as may be found in many hardcopy product manuals. Unfortunately, some Unix commands tend to be very bloated and include lots of optional behavior that is often irrelevant to the original intent of the command and can be done much more easily using shell features like piping and redirection, and thus the manpage grows to explain all of the features. This example exaggerates the obscurity and terseness found in many man pages, making fun of the typical style of the genre.

@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 "Or best offer" is usually seen on a notice of a private sale, where it proclaims the intent to be flexible on asking price in the hope of expediting the sale, with a suggestion that the seller will sell to the highest bidder even if the offer is nowhere near the asking price. In the context of the comic, it suggest that the rights for the program are available for purchase by anyone who makes the "best" offer. Since the other licenses listed would allow free usage without incurring any royalty charge, it would be pointless to buy the rights to this program. It is possible to revoke the other licenses though. Perhaps the program's creator is suggesting the rights could be given to someone making him a different sort of offer, perhaps romantic or sexual?
-In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with silly names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are section numbers. While writing about birb, and without bothering to close the brackets around (3), the writer breaks off to laugh at the reader, telling them that he is kidding and suggesting that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. To fix the fact that the writer didn’t close the parenthesis: ). The implication is that anyone trying to pick through a man page to find out what a program does is going the long way round, when it's much simpler to get Google to tell you.
+In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with silly names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are section numbers. While writing about birb, and without bothering to [[859: (|close the brackets]] around (3), the writer breaks off to laugh at the reader, telling them that he is kidding and suggesting that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. To fix the fact that the writer didn’t close the parenthesis: ). The implication is that anyone trying to pick through a man page to find out what a program does is going the long way round, when it's much simpler to get Google to tell you.
 Man pages were part of the subject of [[293: RTFM]], [[912: Manual Override]] and [[1343: Manuals]] and were mentioned in [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]] and [[456: Cautionary]].

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:27, 27 December 2024
Line 193:		Line 193:
	[[Category:Man pages]]		[[Category:Man pages]]
	[[Category:Scientific research]]		[[Category:Scientific research]]
		+	[[Category:Unicode]]

@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 "Or best offer" is usually seen on a notice of a private sale, where it proclaims the intent to be flexible on asking price in the hope of expediting the sale, with a suggestion that the seller will sell to the highest bidder even if the offer is nowhere near the asking price. In the context of the comic, it suggest that the rights for the program are available for purchase by anyone who makes the "best" offer. Since the other licenses listed would allow free usage without incurring any royalty charge, it would be pointless to buy the rights to this program. It is possible to revoke the other licenses though. Perhaps the program's creator is suggesting the rights could be given to someone making him a different sort of offer, perhaps romantic or sexual?
-In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with silly names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are section numbers. While writing about birb, and without bothering to close the brackets around (3), the writer breaks off to laugh at the reader, telling them that he is kidding and suggesting that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. The implication is that anyone trying to pick through a man page to find out what a program does is going the long way round, when it's much simpler to get Google to tell you.
+In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with silly names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are section numbers. While writing about birb, and without bothering to close the brackets around (3), the writer breaks off to laugh at the reader, telling them that he is kidding and suggesting that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. To fix the fact that the writer didn’t close the parenthesis: ). The implication is that anyone trying to pick through a man page to find out what a program does is going the long way round, when it's much simpler to get Google to tell you.
 Man pages were part of the subject of [[293: RTFM]], [[912: Manual Override]] and [[1343: Manuals]] and were mentioned in [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]] and [[456: Cautionary]].

@@ Line 122: / Line 122: @@
 | -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear. This flag could also be a reference to the dry-run flags that are sometimes available to make command line tools do a simulation run without making any actual modifications to the system.
 |-
-| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||{{w|ANSEL}} is an obscure character encoding from 1985-2013. It extends ASCII by adding 63 new characters, including 29 combining diacritics. Since most hardware at the time could not handle combining diacritics, it was never popular. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange, as most terminals will not know how to decode it, and will provide incorrect characters for anything beyond ASCII. By comparison, UTF-8 is a standard text encoding supported by almost all modern systems. The problem with using different modes (where the original was also UTF-8) is shown in the title text of [[1683: Digital Data]].
+| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||{{w|ANSEL}} is an obscure character encoding introduced in 1985. It extends ASCII by adding 63 new characters, including 29 combining diacritics. Since most hardware in the 1980s could not handle combining diacritics, it was never popular. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange, as most terminals will not know how to decode it, and will provide incorrect characters for anything beyond ASCII. By comparison, UTF-8 is a standard text encoding supported by almost all modern systems. The problem with using different modes (where the original was also UTF-8) is shown in the title text of [[1683: Digital Data]].
 |-
 | -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update from Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.

@@ Line 106: / Line 106: @@
 | -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output. But the text does not indicate ''what'' the program will overwrite, it could be anything. May work strangely with -d.
 |-
-| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly a reference to {{w|Opposite Day}}, perhaps indicating that it makes all other flags have the opposite effects to usual. If so, a lot of strange things would happen, especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O, -S, and -y. On the other hand, it may simply indicate that absent flags are treated as if present and vice versa.
+| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, a reference to {{w|Opposite Day}}. Perhaps indicates that it would make all other flags have the opposite effects as usual. If so, a lot of strange things would happen, especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O, -S, and -y. On the other hand, it may simply indicate that absent flags are treated as if they were present and vice versa.
 |-
 | -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a {{w|Western_Schism|historical schism}} in the {{w|Catholic Church}}. In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move or the authority of the Pope who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. A possible feature request for ''blerp'' would be to allow "PISA". It is the second time this week that Popes have been mentioned, last time was two comics before in [[1690: Time-Tracking Software]] regarding the Pope's sexual activity.

← Older revision		Revision as of 02:06, 9 August 2022
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	[[Category:Bees]]		[[Category:Bees]]
	[[Category:Man pages]]		[[Category:Man pages]]
		+	[[Category:Scientific research]]

@@ Line 69: / Line 69: @@
 | -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something? Sounds as if you have to ''really'' know what you're doing to use this option. Could also be a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh or other similar games where a card can be played in "Attack Mode".
 |-
-| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress {{w|Bee|Bees}} (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. A possible implication is that running the program without this flag would somehow result in the user being attacked by bees. This is also a possible {{w|Discworld}} reference, as the ''{{W|Hex_(Discworld)#Structure_and_technology|long-term storage}}'' of the only recurring computer in the series, ''{{w|Hex (Discworld)|Hex}}'', is composed of a beehive. (Note that the actual computer runs on ants.) Another explanation is that there will be smoke (perhaps {{w|Magic smoke|magic}}?), which is used by beekeepers to suppress bees.
+| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress {{w|Bee|Bees}} (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. A possible implication is that running the program without this flag would somehow result in the user being attacked by bees. This is also a possible {{w|Discworld}} reference, as the ''{{W|Hex_(Discworld)#Structure_and_technology|long-term storage}}'' of the only recurring computer in the series, ''{{w|Hex (Discworld)|Hex}}'', is composed of a beehive. (Note that the actual computer runs on ants.) Another explanation is that there will be smoke (perhaps {{w|magic smoke}}?), which is used by beekeepers to suppress bees.
 |-
 | -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use {{w|Hyphen|hyphens}} (short horizontal lines largely used within words). {{w|Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes}} (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't always be easily typed into a command line interface, so by invoking ''blerp'' with this flag you are intentionally making things difficult for yourself.