SunOS man pages: A womanwriter's Perspective

man pages and I go back a long time.

My first experience with the UNIX man pages was in 1980, when I was hired at Ford Aerospace to start an in-house Unix training program. Ford hired me for my background in training and course development, not computers. True, I'd developed and taught "Introduction to Data Processsing" and some IBM-based computer classes at Memorex. The fact that I knew nothing about Unix didn't seem to bother the folks at Ford Aerospace. They were confident that I could learn Unix and get their in-house training program up and running. In the end, they were right.

At that time, the only documentation on Unix was the "Unix Programmer's Manual," a collection of technical papers written by the folks at Bell Labs, and the "Unix Reference Manual," containing what have since become known as the man pages. Armed with these materials, I developed and taught an "Introduction to Unix" class in less than one month. The class was a huge success. Next came classes on the ed and vi editors, SCCS, nroff, and troff. "System Administration" and "Unix for Programmers" came later. By the time I left Ford in 1984, we had a full fledged in-house Unix training program, two full-time trainers, one part-time trainer, and several support personnel. It was a real feeling of accomplishment, both personally and professionally.

Back then, I didn't give much thought to man pages except for the fact that they were a key piece of Unix reference material that helped me do my job. Many years later, I realize how my relationship with that key piece of reference material has changed and evolved. That's a subject for another day.