man pages

[Steven W. Orr]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Derek Martin wrote:

=>--[PinePGP]--------------------------------------------------[begin]--
=>On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 02:48:53PM -0500, Steven W. Orr wrote:
=>> =>You have the GNU project to thank for that...  Their standard
=>> =>documentation methodology is GNU texinfo, which in my opinion is ucky.
=>> =>In part because their browser interface is unintuitive and yet another
=>> =>program that I don't want to have to learn; in part because the
=>> =>standard method of documentation on Unix systems is man pages, and
=>> =>providing info seems to be an exuse not to provide man pages; and in
=>> =>part because it seems that the authors of texinfo documentation most
=>> =>often write lousy documentation.  I think the latter is caused in part
=>> =>by a lack of a standard organization...  Man pages all have a standard
=>> =>format that is well known, making it very easy to duplicate.
=>> Ucky!? Ucky you say!? I wave my private parts in your general direction!
=>> info pages are really cool. Can you imagine saying man gcc and having to
=>> wade through that mess without hypertaxt? You start with the .texinfo src
=>> and then you get a choice of either processing it into .info pages for
=>> hypertext access on line, or else you process it with texi2dvi to
=>> publication quality printing. And I dare say that the number of commands
=>> needed to learn how to run info is far less than what you have to learn to
=>> run man.
=>>
=>
=>MY GOD that's hard to read Steven.  A little white space goes a LONG way.
=>
=>But yes, I say it's ucky.  I'd much sooner read GCC's man page, were
=>it complete.  IMO, it's much easier to search a man page for what
=>you're looking for.  Though mod's tip makes that a bit less painful
=>(thanks Mike!) should I need to do so in the future...
=>
=>And I dare say that your last statement is preposterous.  When I want
=>to read man pages, I use one command: man.  Never use anything else
=>(except maybe to pipe it to a printer command, which I almost never
=>do)...  No idea what you're talking about.  If I want to navigate
=>through a man page, I need exactly 3 keys: <space>, 'b', and '/'.



If I want to navigate through an info page, I just hit space same as you 
do. Substitute ^S for '/' and S for hypersearch. M-v goes backwards and u 
goes up a level. It's really not hard.

The gcc man page (if it were complete) would be well over 35K lines long. 
Man pages just are not appropriate for something that long. 

You do have a choice when reading info pages. If you're not allergic to 
emacs, that's pretty much the premier info reader. OTOH, there's the 
stand-alone info command which is really quite good.


Now it's time for more spaces. :-)






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