20 Sep
2017
20 Sep
'17
6:45 p.m.
Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
|> On Sep 19, 2017, at 4:35 PM, Theodore Ts'o <tytso(a)mit.edu> wrote:
|>
|> If you take a look at how perl handles its man pages, with 188 man
|> pages in section 1:
|
|... you quickly recognize the difference between a manpage (i.e. reference \
|page) and a user manual. Perl's (and other's) attempts to pack a 200 \
|page user guide into a block of manpages is a misuse of what manpages \
|represent.
|
|texinfo was a good move in the direction towards online, cross-referenced, \
|user documentation. But so often that lead to manpages that consisted \
|of the single line "see the texinfo doc"; the documentation authors \
|completely missing the point.
I absolutely agree with that. It is like Hubbard laughing about
"how easy anything suddenly is". I think there are different
variants of letting go.
..And then many HTML versions of texinfo manuals use the split
version and then you have pages with a sentence or two, which can
drive you mad.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)