Category: News

I first came across quick reference cards in the early 1980s – I think the first one may have been a Digital Equipment Corporation MACRO-11 quick reference card. I found that they suited me in that I could generally remember what each command did, but I could often not remember the arguments – or I might forget about the existence of particular commands.

Later I came across the GNU emacs editor (which is now my editor of choice – if I can’t use Emacs, I use ed).

Nowerdays I often put together a reference card when I am getting to grips with a new technology (e.g. the Perl XML::LibXML modules).

The refcards.com web site collects my own cards and those of others. I have quite a few cards in various stages of development, that I will be adding over the coming months. I will also be adding links to refcards and cheatsheets hosted on other sites as I come across them.

Plans

I have various vague plans for refcards.com:

• add more cards as I come across them
• tidy up and update the cards that I have authored myself (especially the Apache card)
• add a search facility for the site
• add a subversion server with source code for my cards
• set up a mailing list

I will get round to these in time.

Andrew Ford, 23 July 2007

Trademarks

The logo and the stylized tri-fold card with the letter ‘r’ – – are trademarks of Ford & Mason Ltd.

Postscript

And in case you wanted to know, the refcards.com site is created with Emacs and powered by Template Toolkit, Catalyst and PostgreSQL.