On 2012-01-14, at 2:35, Sergey Poznyakoff <[email protected]> wrote: > Mark Krenz <[email protected]> ha escrit: > >> Really? In 25+ years they've never released a man page? > > No, and there are no plans of doing so either. Tar is fully documented > in texinfo format. The manual is included in the distribution. Apart > from that, it is available online in various formats at > http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual. Given all that, I see no reason > in any additional man pages.
I think this is a pretty narrow view on the world. In all the years that I've been using *nix systems, I still don't really find the GNU info pages very useful compared to man pages because the user interface is completely non-intuitive. Up and down arrows working? Does <enter> select the link under the cursor? Nope. Does the status bar at the bottom of the screen show how to get help on the keys? Nope. Does '?' get help? Nope. If every distro is making the effort to develop and maintain man pages, this is a pretty clear indication that users find man pages useful. If this is being contributed to the tar project, it seems reasonable to accept the man page instead of forcing divergent and incomplete man pages to be maintained externally. Cheers, Andreas
