On Saturday, January 14, 2012 09:37:42 AM Andreas Dilger did opine: > 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
+100 Andreas, although the 'info' situation is ameliorated to a large extent by using 'pinfo', the format still isn't near as handy as just typing 'man tar'. Something I can do here for a pretty complete and perhaps too concise even if it is equ to quite a few pages if printed. Tar is a complex beast to understand fully. However, 'pinfo tar' appears to in this case, to present a more complete reference to tar than the man page I have, with a tutorial section and possibly a longer discussion of each option and its interaction with others and the output. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it. -- Ogden Nash
