Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:45:57 -0800 From: Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> To: FST777@phreaker.net, freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT Humble Pie Message-ID: <200303311845.57470.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> In-Reply-To: <0HCN00J117QS1W@net.WAU.NL> References: <0HCN00J117QS1W@net.WAU.NL>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Monday 31 March 2003 07:12 pm, Frans-Jan v. Steenbeek wrote: > IMHO the concept of "man-pages" is as good > as outdated as GUI-enviroments become more popular. One could almost say that books are as good as outdated as television becomes more popular :-) The alternative to man pages would seem to be some sort of browser, and HTML makes sense. But man pages are more than just pages. They are pages indexed into an information system. You gain one form of flexibility by moving to a browser, but at the expense of another kind. You don't want to be typing "mozilla file:/usr/share/man/man1/cat_1.html". You want the man pages at your fingertips. The solution is to integrate man pages into a browser. This has already been done! Using KDE, I can view the man pages index Konqueror by typing "man:" as the URL. I can also use the KDE Help Center for the same thing. Also in Konqueror I can go right to the man page I want by typing "man:cat" or "#cat". Best of all, the man pages are now pleasantly formatted and *hyperlinked*. (KDE needs to add "apropos" as an IO slave as well). There are other similar solutions. I brought up KDE because I am more familiar with it. David
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200303311845.57470.DavidJohnson>