/etc/motd summary
Warren Block
wblock at wonkity.com
Mon Sep 8 19:08:14 UTC 2014
Summarizing the responses and changes to /etc/motd:
Using ANSI has both philosphical and practical problems, and should be
avoided. In short, it has cooties.
Extra horizontal whitespace is the least likely to cause problems as
command delimiters, and inoffensive to most responders. Rearranging
the information into a list of URLs is a net win.
Shorter is better. A simpler motd that links to a single web page
might be acceptable.
My suggestions:
Short-term:
Here is the most popular/least objectionable version with all of the
suggestions implemented as best I could:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/motd/motd.whitespace-url
I suggest that I commit this in time for 10.1.
Longer-term:
Creating a "FreeBSD Technical Support Resources" page, or updating an
existing one, is something we can and should do anyway. Once we have
that, it can be used in motd. (Or proposed, anyway. To me, it seems
like a conceptually bigger step than using ANSI. Fahrradschuppen ahoy!)
man(1) is very weak for new users. A doc PR just showed up today
mentioning that it does not describe the various sections. That is
actually in intro(1), intro(2), and so on. Congratulations if you
remember those, it's usually a hunt for me.
Man page notation is also a problem for new users, and also not
explained in man(1). Is it explained anywhere in the man pages? Even
if it is, some examples in man(1) would help.
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