Re: [9fans] info bashing
My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they realized that they couldn't write a decent man page for their tools so they invented the info pages and the --help flag. In fairness to info, you have to consider its history. The want was to be able to present an online edition of some large documents (the emacs documentation), with cross-references, search capabilities, index lookups, etc. This was long before the web was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. In that regard, it was a spectacular success. Being able to jump around a 400+page document in real time on a VT100 plugged into a Sun 3/50 workstation is a testament to that. The standalone implementation suffers from being keystroke compatible with the emacs lisp implementation. Those of us who grep up on emacs can find our way around. For anyone else, I can't imagine how they manage to use it. But as others have said, treating info as a replacement for man pages is arrogance beyond any rational description. Then again, the quality of documentation for most GNU software matches that of the code. --lyndon
Re: [9fans] info bashing
In fairness to info, you have to consider its history. The want was to be able to present an online edition of some large documents (the emacs documentation), with cross-references, search capabilities, index lookups, etc. This was long before the web was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. In that regard, it was a spectacular success. Being able to jump around a 400+page document in real time on a VT100 plugged into a Sun 3/50 workstation is a testament to that. i take this as another strike against info. the fact that one sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to build bloatware to accomidate bloatware. it's like instead of taking a bath, you buy a monster air filter, so no one will notice the stench. - erik
Re: [9fans] info bashing
i take this as another strike against info. the fact that one sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to build bloatware to accomidate bloatware. That's like blaming Mozilla because you choose to read Sarah Palin's missives with Firefox. --lyndon
Re: [9fans] info bashing
On Fri Mar 25 15:15:59 EDT 2011, lyn...@orthanc.ca wrote: i take this as another strike against info. the fact that one sees that the editor's docs are 400+ pages, and there's no easy way to cut that down to a man page, and yet they proceeded to build bloatware to accomidate bloatware. That's like blaming Mozilla because you choose to read Sarah Palin's missives with Firefox. your defense of info was that it was built to be read a 400+ page reference for emacs. my claim is that if you find a reasonable editor, you won't have a need for info. - erik
