User talk:Snags

I'd like to organize this in sections, with the newest info at the top. It'll make it easier to edit and draws attention to the new stuff. Replies in each section can be in chronological order. Don't forget (like I do) to sign with four tildes ("˜˜˜˜"). --Snags

June 29

Noticed your boilerplate section. Are you sure what you're copy-and-pasting is CC-by-sa compatible? Most man pages are GFDL, which can't be released under Creative Commons. Crazyeddie 00:10, Jun 30, 2004 (EDT)

• Well, being as I'm posting a link to a webpage, yes. The actual text of the manpages is hosted elsewhere. --Snags 09:54, Jun 30, 2004 (EDT)

Okay, guess I didn't see that. I'm kinda hyper-sensitive on the whole copyright thing after I found out we can't use wikipedia articles. Crazyeddie 17:17, Jun 30, 2004 (EDT)

April 10

Why did 'Encryption' have two links to wikipedia articles, one of which (cryptography) clobbered an already existing LQWiki article - correction, an laready existing stub *rolleyes* (but the principles the same) - and the other of which (public-key [cryptography]) could be written here? Digiot 15:55, Apr 10, 2004 (EDT)

Well, when I wrote that text, I didn't clobber anything. You can't clobber something in fresh text. Cryptography should probably be a REDIRECT to encryption, anyway. Gpg covers the basics of public-key cryptography, and it's already linked in encryption. I linked to wikipedia because they already have great articles on the non-Linux-specific subject covered in this LQWiki article. Of course, I'm not offended by edits to my text. But don't be surprised to find and "External links" section. --Snags 16:41, Apr 10, 2004 (EDT)

Well, what I meant was that clicking on that link would have taken them offsite rather then to the onsite 'content' with the same title. However, that was before I noticed there was no actual content. Still, in principle, as I say, it'd be better for a cryptography link to go to the LQWiki rather than the wikipedia if each had articles of the same name. However, you bring up an excellent point regarding the non-Linux-specific nature of the material. And external links would of course be fine either way. (I actually should have done that myself.) My concern was solely with them being in the body of the text and - intercepting (maybe better than 'clobber'?) - intercepting a theoretical LQWiki link.

As far as the redirects, the unfortunate thing is that I think 'cryptography' is a slightly more general term and 'encryption' was originally created hierarchically in 'commands' - the focus of the article is supposed to be on Linux encryption commands. The paragraph(s) at the top are merely supposed to be minimally explanatory. Many of the things that redirect to it should redirect to the not-yet-existing 'cryptography'. Really, 'encryption' need to be renamed. *sigh* Digiot 17:16, Apr 10, 2004 (EDT)

March 26

I noticed you were 'piping' links such as 'gzip' on the 'compress' page, but the links work without the [[gzip|foo]]. Is there a reason I'm missing? Not a big deal as they work either way, but I was confused and it doesn't seem necessary.

Digiot 15:25, Mar 26, 2004 (EST)

The confirmation page when I clicked "Move this page" implied that I should remove double redirects. Also, I saw others going around doing this, so I figured it wasn't a bad thing to do.

I took your advice on the "Flags" versus "Options". The article is now called Command options (should that be command-line options?). It makes sense, because the function designed to deal with them is called getopt(). --Snags 15:45, Mar 26, 2004 (EST)

Oh. No, avoiding double redirects is good. :) Usually that can be taken care of by directly editing the redirect that doubles, though. (Not always - sometimes they get a little 'hung'.)

And I didn't realize the 'flags' thing was so widespread. Like I say, I think 'flags' is fine but was just thinking that if there were one or two, they might as well be called 'options'. If it's a mass-changing issue... well, whichever you think. Hm. As far as what to call the main page, I'd almost like 'options' but I suppose that's too vague. I think either's fine. 'Command-line options' might be a little better but maybe not worth moving it again. Again, whichever you'd prefer or maybe some other folks have some ideas.

Digiot 15:52, Mar 26, 2004 (EST)

Most instances of "flags" were written by me. Once you said options, I agreed. To me, a flag is an on|off option. I'll leave it to someone with more motivation than I to rename it Command-line options. --Snags