Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 13:03:52 +1100 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Gary Kline <kline@tera.com> Cc: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, Rasputin <rasputin@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: better man pages [was: beginners with bsd] Message-ID: <20001105130350.A7864@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20001102170242.A14016@athena.sea.tera.com>; from Gary Kline on Thu, Nov 02, 2000 at 05:02:42PM -0800 References: <000a01c043c3$942af1e0$1d24fc3e@knapp> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0011010047360.691-100000@sherman.spotnet> <20001102093329.B14637@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20001103003014.D4698@hades.hell.gr> <3A01F6D9.6320A0E5@acuson.com> <20001102170242.A14016@athena.sea.tera.com>
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On Thu, Nov 02, 2000 at 05:02:42PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 02, 2000 at 03:20:57PM -0800, David Johnson wrote:
> > Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> >
> > > What can anyone say about an OS where the manpages are considered something
> > > `extra' that is not part of the system itself? *sigh*
> >
> > It's not just R**H**, it's all of the Linux distributions that use GNU.
> > GNU wants you to use info instead of man. What is especially obnoxious
> > is when you use info and see the words "this man page is not longer
> > maintained...".
> >
> > I've been tempted to write an info2man conversion utility and donate it
> > to GNU, but I know that they would never use it, too heretical.
> >
>
> I'll throw in my dime's worth and suggest that every `info'
> page be turned into a man-style page with hyperlinks.
Not necessary. Try using the pinfo port.
'pinfo sleep' will display sleep(1) with lynx-style navigation and
hyperlinks where related man pages are mentioned.
'pinfo mtools' will display the mtools info document if it exists,
otherwise try the man page.
pinfo comes with a nice man page, too (yes a real man page).
I've been running a basic VMS to UNIX orientation course where we
compared man pages from several systems they were going to encounter:
FreeBSD, Slackware Linux, Dynix/PTX, Digital UNIX (now Tru64)
We found the FreeBSD and Digital man pages to be much more readable and
informative than the others, and both had a consistency in structure
that made "getting the knack of it" fairly easy. While the Digital
man pages had more information, the FreeBSD man pages were
often the most usable, at least for the samples that we dissected.
I've seen people read a man page on a FreeBSD system in order to
understand the corresponding man page on another system.
We also have man pages (like forward(5)) that other systems lack.
For a bunch of developers who hate writing documentation and who
aren't even getting paid for it, we've done pretty bloody well.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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