19 May
2024
19 May
'24
12:18 a.m.
On Sat, May 18, 2024 at 02:07:38PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
I just revisited this ironic echo of Mies van der
Rohe's aphorism, "Less is
more".
% less --help | wc
298
Last time I looked, the line count was about 220. Bloat is self-catalyzing.
What prompted me to look was another disheartening discovery. The "small
special tool" Gnu diff has a 95-page manual! And it doesn't cover the
option I was looking up (-h). To be fair, the manual includes related
programs like diff3(1), sdiff(1) and patch(1), but the original manual for
each fit on one page.
Normally I agree with Doug but on documentation, the less is more leaves me
cold. It's fine when it is V7 cat that had maybe an option or two. GNU
diff is a complex beast and it needs lots of docs.
Personally, I like it when man pages have a few usage examples, the BitKeeper
docs are like that. But I'm ok with a terse man page with a SEE ALSO that
points to a user guide.
Docs should be helpful.
--
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Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat