Notices by Julia Evans (b0rk@social.jvns.ca)

@janneke I've been appreciating the fish shell's approach to documentation recently, where `help THING` opens an HTML manual page (stored locally) in a browser.

@janneke that's awesome, the LilyPond website looks really clear!

@janneke I'm glad to hear that info pages were helpful to you! I think you're the one of the first people I've heard say that and it's interesting to hear what your experience has been like

@janneke I mean I spent 20 years using Linux every day without even realizing that info pages existed (beyond maybe once when I tried to use the `info` viewer and gave up instantly) so it's hard for me to personally relate to the idea that more info pages would have been helpful

@nelson ah yeah tried to clarify that I mean the software and design decisions that were made there, not the cultural impact

@janneke oh interesting what do you mean when you say man pages are elitist?

for example I thought the “vim vs emacs” flamewars were silly (who cares? use what you want!)

but actually I feel like some of the GNU software design decisions are really influenced by emacs (readline, info pages) and that does actually have an effect

(please don’t tell me that readline has a vi mode)

(2/?)

also this guidance on command line arguments is great, I didn’t realize these things came from the GNU project and I really appreciate them https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine-Interfaces.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces

(via @zwol)

(3/?)

also I didn’t realize that standardizing “—help” came from the GNU project, it makes me wonder if folks have proposed adding —help to programs that predated GNU (or are from a BSD project etc) and if so what that conversation looked like

I imagine it’s not always possible to do without breaking backwards compatibility

(4/?)

anyway i’ve been thinking about how to understand the way “the terminal” works it feels really important to understand the cultural impact of specific programs or projects (like xterm, the GNU project, etc)

i think it’s something a lot of people are intuitively aware of just from using the terminal and noticing patterns

(5/?)

this feels like a silly thing to say but even though i’ve been using linux since 2004 I feel like i’m learning recently that the impact of the GNU project’s software (and its design decisions) on me is even bigger than I thought

like even just the fact that (afaik) many of them used Emacs has an impact on me today

(please no “it’s GNU/Linux”)

@zwol ooh I should look at this thanks

@zwol “Please define long-named options that are equivalent to the single-letter Unix-style options. We hope to make GNU more user friendly this way.”

i had no idea this was the goal and it’s so good

aw I figured one day I would regret using bitly links and I guess that time has come. oh well! (I moved to self-hosting my link shortener a few years ago but I've definitely printed out some bitly links in my time)

how to add a directory to your PATH https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/02/13/how-to-add-a-directory-to-your-path/

@gnomon yeah i'd be interested, i've never known how to do that really

i'd also be curious about how you use it

kind of makes me want to write a "how to add a directory to your PATH" blog post, which seems silly because it feels like a very basic thing that someone should have explained already but also if I search for how to add a directory to your PATH, the explanations do not feel very clear or complete (a lot of them assume you're using bash for example)

been looking into working with a warehouse in the UK (or maybe EU if we can find one) to be able to ship zines to the EU/UK more easily. it's not clear if having another fulfillment center would make EU shipping easier or harder to manage though

one thing we’ve been learning since we started selling print zines a few years ago is that there are a bunch of EU regulations/taxes and trying to navigate them as a tiny business outside the EU is very confusing. we've made a lot of progress but it takes a lot of our time.

anyway if anyone happens to know of an EU-based fullfillment company that specializes in working with very small businesses I'd love to know about it

i was trying to explain how you know what directory to add to your PATH when using a new installer (npm, cargo, homebrew, bundler, go, etc) and it was way more difficult to explain than I thought. it feels like

- ideally you remember from last time
- or the tool prints out directions the first time you use it (but never again)
- or you look in the docs which is NOT as easy as it seems (I tried to find it and it was hard!)
- or you go to stack overflow which will probably get you there