Dumb Question.

[James Kroger]

I know this is probably common knowledge to everyone but me, but...

There are several "sources" newsgroups, for unix, Xwindows, etc.,
where people post various programs to do things in unix, X, etc.

Question: how is one supposed to know what these programs do?
The comments at the beginning always say something like
"this is version 7 of the fourth release of binshellarchthing
with modifications to the processthing to be compatible with the
otherthing. Cut here."

I never have any idea what the program is supposed to do. Why don't people
say "this program does x y z...?"