On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
>> Is it truely the info pages you hate, or just the info user
>> interface program? I suspect the latter. I like what info is
>> TRYING to do - hyperlink documentation in a useful manner, but
>> the UI just plain sucks. HTML'ing it means I can choose my own
>> UI - Lynx/Netscape, etc..
>>
>> The info documents are very useful. Try reading them with
>> midnight commander in the /usr/info dir, or with less or
>> something. You get a bunch of crap here and there, but don't
>> have to screw with the crappy info UI. ;o)
>
>I dislike both. the info command is woeful; most of the documents I try to
>read are poorly organised and I have to find a mile of links to get what I
>want. In many cases, many of the links prove to be false leads.
100% agreement for sure.
>When I want to know about a command, I want to know about that command. I
>don't want to spend ages trying to figure the command's use so I can
>back-track false leads.
Halleleiuia (sp?) ;o)
man basename is much easier than:
info libc
Then search for an hour.
I'd rather have one big ass txt file, and do:
less /usr/bigasstextfiles/bigasstextfile.txt.gz
And then use "/" to search for what I want. That is what I do
with "man bash" to find stuff in the bash manpage.
Easier to locate stuff in a linear document. Why cant they make
LINEAR hypertext documents? Why do they HAVE to be a screwy web
of clustered documents each with one paragraph of information on
each? I want a continuous bigass document to read like a book.
A hyperlinked index, toc, and possibly the odd hyperlink in the
body is fine, but not a web mess. Just because we have the
capability to make webs doesn't mean we SHOULD for all
documentation. info makes it a big mess.
>and it opens the relevant page in a PM window. There's a search facility, one
>can search the current manual or ALL manuals. There are navigation buttons for
>sequential access (like reading a book) revisiting previous pages, going
>directly to the contents or index.
>
>In contrast, it's year 2000 and the info command does not even understand a
>mouse.
Probably because nobody actually uses it and so they never wanted
to try and improve it either. ;o)
>It's true that GNOME and KDE have better interfaces to the documentation,
>Well, better for beginners; I still find myself using the man command a great
>deal as it's quicker when I know what I want to see. However, they're still
>not very good.
Yep.
man and "man -k" is faster than info and endless search through
web of lost information.
I can find stuff in info faster by grepping the directory than by
using the program.
Unfortunately, they are all gzipped now so that doesn't work
well. e2compr would be a good solution to that though. ;o)
TTYL
--
Mike A. Harris Linux advocate
Computer Consultant GNU advocate
Capslock Consulting Open Source advocate
Try out Red Hat Linux today: http://www.redhat.com
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.2/
_______________________________________________
Redhat-devel-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
