On 11/25/19 8:15 PM, Clint Hepner wrote:
Alternatively, maybe a short list of sections at the top of the man page would
provide
a hint.
The man page format is pretty entrenched. This is an opportunity for other
tools to fill the gap.
For example, imagine the man page started out like this:
NAME
bash - GNU Bourne-Again Shell
SYNOPSIS
bash [options] [command_string | file]
DESCRIPTION
Bash is [...]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OPTIONS
ARGUMENTS
INVOCATION
DEFINITIONS
RESERVED WORDS
SHELL GRAMMAR
COMMENTS
QUOTING
PARAMETERS
EXPANSION
REDIRECTION
ALIASES
FUNCTIONS
ARITHMETIC EVALUATION
CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS
SIMPLE COMMAND EXPANSION
COMMAND EXECUTION
COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENT
EXIT STATUS
SIGNALS
JOB CONTROL
PROMPTING
READLINE
HISTORY
HISTORY EXPANSION
SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
RESTRICTED SHELL
SEE ALSO
FILES
AUTHORS
BUG REPORTS
BUGS
If you want something like this, the info format is a good start. It has
tables of contents, menus with links, and internal cross-references.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU [email protected] http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
