man pages
Scott Prive
Scott.Prive at storigen.com
Fri Dec 13 12:45:12 EST 2002
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pll at lanminds.com [mailto:pll at lanminds.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 8:23 AM
> To: Marc Evans
> Cc: Derek Martin; gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Subject: Re: Networking help
>
>
>
snip ...
>
> <annoyance-level=insanely hi!?
>
> WHAT IS IT ABOUT LINUX THAT MAKES PEOPLE THINK THEY DON'T NEED
> MAN PAGES!!!!
>
> DESCRIPTION
> This program does not have a useful manpage....
> .
> .
> You can start reading the very good documents available in
> the /usr/share/doc/iproute/ directory, in .ps, .dvi and
> .tex formats.
>
> ERRRRRRRR!
>
> </annoyance-level>
>
> <rant>
>
The lack of decent man pages on Linux is the one thing I hate about the environment the most (I like Linux, I just hate the shoddy and neglected documentation process).
Just after the "This is not a useful manpage", my next favorite is the "This COULD be a manpage but we chose not to make one: try 'info [subject]' instead.". Lastly, there's the completely incorrect manpages for things such as changed kernel system calls, etc. which haven't been updated since changes in 2.4 or 2.2.
Maybe Linux Standards Base will save us, in that it will at least prod the major Linux vendors to work from a common documentation tree. The current process (or lack of it) really sucks.
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