Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 17:33:54 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A patch to man to handle "man.1"... Message-ID: <3F1C5C42.2090207@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <87el0j1x1x.fsf@inf.enst.fr> References: <3F19C78A.7030008@mac.com> <20030719233535.GF77396@sunbay.com> <3F19D8D3.1040401@mac.com> <87vftyoy91.fsf@inf.enst.fr> <20030721192952.GE23226@zot.electricrain.com> <87el0j1x1x.fsf@inf.enst.fr>
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Samuel Tardieu wrote: [ ... ] > It may cover all the cases, but I'm still undecided whether it makes > things simpler or not :-) After all, it's the very same number of > characters to type and complexity to add (your first implementation > looked ok but had an hidden flaw, wouldn't your second have one as > well?). Thanks for your feedback, Sam. You've raised several points which I will attempt to address. First, any change to 'man' probably will be expected to be 100% backwards-compatible with the behavior of the existing command, at least as a controllable default. Yes? OK. -- Most people, particularly novices, are going to type "man foo" without any section number. People often don't realize that there _are_ several 'versions' of a manpage, or different manpages of the same basename in different sections. Until you show them, such people don't even realize that "man 2 sync" and "man 8 sync" display different things. The following use case helps address such problems. Type "man sync" then <tab> and get: 7-shot% man sync sync.2 sync.8 syncer.4 syncok.3 ...displayed, with additional <tab>s cycling through the list of items. Whether shell completion saves typing is less important than whether it can aid comprehension. [This is in response to your comment vis-a-vis "simpler".] -- I acknowledge the point that my patch would make "man foo.1" not work if there was a foo.1.2 manpage in section two. [ It is at least arguable that manpage authors should be able to use any basename they want, although life is much less confusing if one restricts basenames to not have a period in them. More to the point, such manpages exist, so...moot. ] On the other hand, the suggestion made by Chris appears to address the concern of retaining the prior behavior for this case. -- -Chuck
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