Bah.
If anyone is familiar with the GNU Coding Standards
(http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html), they'd understand why man
pages are either out of date or non-existant.
"The preferred way to document part of the GNU system is to write a manual
in the Texinfo formatting language. This makes it possible to produce a good
quality formatted book, using TeX, and to generate an Info file. It is also
possible to generate HTML output from Texinfo source."
(http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_28.html#SEC28)
Regarding man pages:
"In the GNU project, man pages are secondary. It is not necessary or
expected for every GNU program to have a man page, but some of them do. It's
your choice whether to include a man page in your program."
(http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_37.html#SEC37)
yadda yadda yadda.
And of course, 99.9% if not all GNU programs support at least two
options, --help and --version
(http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_14.html#SEC14) ; try using them sometime.
:)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul W. Abrahams"
To: "Chris Reeves"
Cc: ; "SuSE Mailing List"
Sent: 14 February 2000, Monday 12:53
Subject: Re: [SLE] Tar!
| Chris Reeves wrote:
|
| > Rogier Maas wrote:
| > >
| > > You're right, I was looking on an RHS box. I wonder why SuSE didn't
| > > include it? Tar is never out of date.
| >
| > But its manpage is. Red Hat just include an old man page, not an
up-to-date
| > one.
| >
| > The documentation for tar is now found with 'info tar' or 'tar --help
|less' as
| > someone mentioned earlier.
| >
| > There's been a lot of confusion about this in the past...
|
| The question is whether an out-of-date man page is better than none at
all. I
| think it is, particularly since the old options almost always work, but
opinions
| may differ.
|
| Paul Abrahams
|
|
|
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