Back to Miller

Structure of these documents

docs/src/structure-of-these-documents.md

6.18.12.4 KB
Original Source
<!--- PLEASE DO NOT EDIT DIRECTLY. EDIT THE .md.in FILE PLEASE. ---> <div> <span class="quicklinks"> Quick links: &nbsp; <a class="quicklink" href="../reference-main-flag-list/index.html">Flags</a> &nbsp; <a class="quicklink" href="../reference-verbs/index.html">Verbs</a> &nbsp; <a class="quicklink" href="../reference-dsl-builtin-functions/index.html">Functions</a> &nbsp; <a class="quicklink" href="../glossary/index.html">Glossary</a> &nbsp; <a class="quicklink" href="../release-docs/index.html">Release docs</a> </span> </div> # Structure of these documents

The goal is multiple levels of detail.

  • The Introduction page is the shortest: headlines and essential summary.
  • The Getting started section is for new or near-new users who want some simple examples along with a connecting narrative. The goal is to get a new user up and running, enabling them to perform interesting tasks with their own data.
  • The Miller in more detail section is just-past-introductory, tell-me-more material about some of the things that make Miller unique: what file formats it handles (and how it handles them), how it relates to other tools in the Unix toolkit, and so on.
  • The FAQs and examples section is non-introductory for people looking for various ways to do things by example. The discussion is pragmatic rather than theoretical, and use-case-driven.
  • The Background section is some non-essential historical and meta material on why Miller was created.
  • The Reference section aims to answer all questions that the previous sections didn't. The discussion is concept-driven, although it includes numerous examples throughout for concreteness.
    • The main reference carefully examines various aspects of Miller, concept by concept.
    • The DSL reference focuses on the Miller programming language, again following a concept-at-a-time approach.
    • The miscellaneous reference is aptly named, with things like build-from-source notes.
    • Documents for previous releases is not only for historical curiosity -- experience has shown that various Linux/BSD distros update their Miller versions on their own cadences, so the version on your system (as shown by mlr --version) might be best served by its respective documentation version.
  • Lastly, new with the Miller 6 documents is an easy-to-access Search field at the top of each page.