On Sun, 07 Jan 2018 17:25:57 +0100, Axel Berger wrote:

> I am a handbook man. I find it easy to remember technical details I've
> seen on paper in writing. That's how I learnt LaTeX, HTML and Gnuplot
> among others. Is there anything out there for Linux on the PI? Of course
> those will be third party and cost money, I have not problem with that.
>
What subjects are you looking for coverage of, e.g. Linux, command
shells, programming languages?

> But all those new gadgets that come without a paper handbook that you
> can underline, stick markers on and write notes on, with those I do have
> problems.
>
I'm the same: I much prefer books to screens for reference.

My choices for a knowledgeable Linux programmer's library boil down to:

- Kernighan & Richie "The C Programming Language" edition backed up by
  "Systems Programming for UNIX SVR4" - the first is the most readable
  book about a programming language that I know, yet is still a good
  reference book. The latter gives excellent coverage of the library
  functions needed for accessing files, TCPIB, date&time, interprocess
  comms, async i/o etc etc. Its ages old: I got my copy in 1999, and yet
  is still the go-to book for discovering which library functions to use
  for an unfamiliar task and how best to use them.

  Add Kernighan & Pike's "The Practise of Programming" if you're new to
  the art and want to know how to write programs that are well structured
  as well as easy to maintain and debug.

  I still haven't found anything nearly as good for Java or any other
  programming language, except "A very Informal Introduction to Algol
  68", which is the only manual that has made me laugh out loud.

- for a professional or serious amateur Sedgewick's "Algorithms" belongs
  in your library too. All its code examples are in Pascal, but that's
  generally easy to translate on the fly into C, Java or any other
  block-structured language: if you need to know things like how to write
  a sort or to implement any of the common tree structures then this can
  save you a huge amount of time an messing about,

- almost anything else that I've found useful has been published by
  O'Reilly:
 - the 'Camel' book "Programming Perl" for Perl programming and
          general reference

 - 'Sed & Awk' for learning to use these useful scripting tools,
   especially awk.

 - 'Unix in a nutshell' or 'Linux in a nutshell" is concise and
    really useful if you know another OS well and want to get up
   to speed on Linux, but not recommended if you don't know any
   other OS, when you'd probabably be better off with
   "Linux for Dummies" (not an O'Reilly title).

Sitting alongside these I think you really need to bookmark these:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/
http://wiki.debian.org/

And finally, located right on your RPi, you really should find out how to
use the following tools:

- 'man' - the manpage reader)

- 'apropos' - get lists of utility programs and standard library
  procedures that are installed on your system and relevant for what
  you're trying to do.

- 'updatedb' - refreshes the catalogue that 'apropos' searches.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie
          | dot org

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