On 2023-09-24 14:37, Dennis German wrote:
After the years and fine tuning of basic HTML, why aren't the man
pages standardized to HTML format?
Perhaps some users don't frequently enough reference man pages as they
should and fewer use info , but (nearly) everyone uses a browser.
Are you implying that the primary way of viewing man pages should be by
using a web browser?
And I don't mean programmatically simply wrapping the man page in HTML.
The ability to
1) wrap text ( not truncate a line with a hyphen and place the
last 4 or 5 characters on the next line) and let the user decide the
width of the window
2) embed links (rather than "see also")
3) use basic fonts to render variables, command name, keywords,
description and clarify optional and alternatives (rather than the
noisy apostrophes, *<* and*>* which also take of space)
4) show the user much more information the first and every page
(rather than needing multiple lines for the simplest keyword
description)
HTML is superior than the current format and easily customizable in
width, font size and colors by the reader.
Thank you for your consideration,
Dennis German
