On 03/12/2015 12:46 PM, Mike Hodson wrote: > "We prefer the full documentation in the info page for a reason." > > Can you either point me to an already elaborated mention of this reason, on > some web page, or elaborate a bit more here? > > I _hate_ texinfo. > > Let me wax poetic upon the ways. Should you not wish to read the ways, > please skip to the bottom. > > *** skip from here *** > > I find it maddening to look through a manual page, (de-facto UNIX > documentation source, since 1971, although sadly not a product of GNU like > Texinfo) and get only partial information. >
Incidentally, I also passionately hate 'info' pages. When I say
'man' I want to read the documentation for an executable, regardless
of what format it's written in or where some arrogant standard-
breaking asshat decided to store it.
Info pages, in particular, suck because they have no 'apropos'
summaries, cannot be used with argument that restricts them to
particular contexts (like file formats vs. linkables vs system
calls vs. shell commands), can't be piped as text through
ordinary shell utilities and a bunch of other things. They are
not as flexible nor as useful in as many contexts as man pages.
If I say 'man' and the man database comes up empty, I don't pursue
it further - as far as I'm concerned that means the software is not
installed, because if there is an executable then there damn well
better be a man page. When I find an executable without a man page,
I usually delete it along with the package that installed it, unless
it's VERY well known and I can verify its package signature. It's
damn dangerous to have executables lying around on your system that
aren't documented properly; you don't know what they're doing.
Put help pages in HTML in some directory somewhere and didn't also
put them in the man pages directory? BAD.
Wrote a text document that explains everything, left in a README.txt
file in the same directory as the executable, and didn't find any way
to pipe it through 'man'? BAD.
Put help pages in texinfo somewhere and posted pointers to them, but
not the information itself, in some fake man pages? better, but
still BAD.
Seriously. Man pages. If you write anything else, alias it under
the man pages directory, write an 'apropos' entry for it, and find
a pager that will properly display it when 'man' invokes a pager.
If it's HTML, you can pop up a browser as a pager. If it's texInfo,
you can pop up an appropriate reader (which does NOT mean emacs).
And if it's text, you can just use the unadorned 'less' command
for a pager. BUT WHATEVER THE HELL IT IS INVOKE THE PAGER
DIRECTLY FROM 'MAN'!!
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