sam(_at_)loganet(_dot_)net wrote,
| The man pages, apparently written by eggbert-level Curlys,
| Larrys, and Moes assume a good (if not excellent) understanding of procmail
| prior to ever opening the man pages. They (the man pages) are confusing
| and written at too high of a level for a beginner, and need to be rewritten
| by someone with a better knack for teaching (or at least explaining... is
| that not what man pages are for?) instead of someone trying to impress, or
| without a clue as to how to explain something.
The manual pages for procmail are like those for other Unix utilities:
intended as reminders and references for people who already know pretty much
what the program is about and what it does but need a refresher for details.
Unix manual pages are not designed as textbooks or tutorials, and those for
procmail are no exceptions.
For getting started and learning the whole underlying idea, there are FAQs and
tutorials, such as Nancy McGough's. I'll readily agree with Olivier Nicole
that the passage in question here should be phrased in simpler syntax, but
it's going to take a complete upheaval of the Unix universe for manual pages
to be usable as beginners' guides.
As to the slurs against Sean Straw that went on in that thread, I have too
much respect for him to jump in front and defend him. He is capable not only
of defending himself but also of choosing his battles. I leave the decisions
on when and how to defend Sean to Sean.
But there is one comment I have. When Sam told Sean,
| No, don't beg. Just take the word "professional" off your resume.
Olivier responded in Sam's support,
Change it to cobbler
A cobbler is either a person who makes or repairs shoes by hand or a type of
fruit pie. Which of those are you suggesting that Sean is, Olivier?
In any case, I think Shane has the answer now: if procmail is invoked without
the -p option and without any rcfiles specified on its command line (which
also means without the -m option, which requires specifying an rcfile), and
/etc/procmailrc exists and has safe permissions, procmail will read
/etc/procmailrc before ~/.procmailrc.
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