Re: Feature request, generating a man page from a node

[Karl Berry]

My feeling remains the same.  If you start trying to chop up the texinfo
source into sections, some of which get produced in the man output, some
of which don't, I don't think the result will be comprehensible.  You
might as well just write the man page from scratch.

However, if you want to try it, feel free.  Put fake "@c @ifman"
commands or some such into your texinfo source and extract them with
sed, say, and see if you can get the right man page and the right
texinfo output out of it.  I certainly don't want to add commands to the
basic source until there's some kind of feasibility proof.  No one has
*ever* successfully done it, and a lot of people, including me, have tried.
This is why I think it's unrealistic.

    I'll try it, even though I find it a little pointless to use man tool
    instead of tool --help, if the former doesn't provide any more
    information.

1) the formatting is different, and lots of people care deeply about the
   formatting (don't ask me why).
2) you can add additional sections and other text at help2man time, so
   it can actually contain more information.