Do I see some confusion here over<div>man pages and manuals. Closer to</div><div>what John-Thomas is suggesting, I</div><div>see man pages as being system </div><div>documentation. i.e., how to use</div><div>Linux, not applications that run under</div>
<div>it.</div><div><br></div><div>We've had rip roaring discussions in</div><div>the past about what is Linux and what</div><div>is not. But short of such flowery </div><div>discourse is the common need to just</div>
<div>see what all the options are.</div><div><br></div><div>In the early days of Unix the philosophy</div><div>was to have simple commands that did</div><div>one thing well. I think it was even put</div><div>something like that. Commands were</div>
<div>piped so the user could build up the</div><div>exactly function needed at the time,</div><div>and one uses aliases to save often </div><div>used sequences.</div><div><br></div><div>Of course all this was in the days fo</div>
<div>truly dumb terminals, and there wasn't</div><div>an ability, to, say, set a color scheme</div><div>in you "ls" command.</div><div><br></div><div>But today even "ls," "cat" and some</div>
<div>other old favorites might have 25 or</div><div>30 options, some of which might even</div><div>be occasionally useful. No mortal can</div><div>remember them all - well a few mortals</div><div>with eidetic memories - maybe 10 </div>
<div>people in the US. So, once again,</div><div>correct, quickly accessible man pages.</div><div><br></div><div>Yes, those old commands mostly do the</div><div>old things too. But.</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, I find the current Linux documentation</div>
<div>world in a bit of disarray. One would line to</div><div>find something that will get them by most of</div><div>the time. It's a question of efficiency. I still</div><div>think the original Unix inventors had it right.</div>
<div><br></div><div>And no, this group is not part of the man</div><div>page system - a good way to get information,</div><div>but not what was intended.... ;-)</div><div><br></div><div> -- Bob</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:57 AM, John-Thomas Richards <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jtr@jrichards.org">jtr@jrichards.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 05:51:59AM -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:<br>
> On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 18:42 -0500, John-Thomas Richards wrote:<br>
> > On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:11:30PM -0500, Joseph Workman wrote:<br>
> > > I still use man page and info... they haven't gone anywhere...<br>
> > Thanks to Debian. Unfortunately the UNIX-y way seems to be on the<br>
> > decline.<br>
><br>
> I don't think this is true. Modern DEs [Desktop Environments] provide<br>
> very robust documentation schemes that are significantly superior to the<br>
> "man page" system. If you use GNOME just run "yelp"; through which you<br>
> can also access the content of the legacy man & info schemes.<br>
<br>
</div>And if the app in question is not part of a DE? Quick, how do I start<br>
OO.o Impress with a presentation loaded and running? `man ooimpress' is<br>
much quicker to find this.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> > Used to be a GUI app was just a front-end to various CLI apps<br>
> > that did one or two things really, really well.<br>
><br>
> Or rather poorly, whichever.<br>
<br>
</div>Good point.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> > Along with that<br>
> > philosophy was the manpage. Simple, elegant, useful.<br>
><br>
> Impossible to navigate and with lousy search capabilities. The "bash"<br>
> man page is monstrous and I've heard many comments about it over the<br>
> years; "useful" was rarely, if ever, a component of those comments.<br>
<br>
</div>manpages aren't about how to use an app. Largely they focus on<br>
commandline switches and syntax.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> > Now many projects don't provide manpages.<br>
><br>
> There is no point to providing man-pages to end-user applications.<br>
> Those applications have help systems or utilize the DE's help system [in<br>
> GNOME: yelp]<br>
<br>
</div>And yet one of the largest (the largest?) distros provide numerous<br>
manpages when the upstream developers won't.<br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
john-thomas<br>
------<br>
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing<br>
exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the<br>
well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.<br>
Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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