Jim Osborn
tar --help does provide concise, useful output. [...] "info tar" is not so useful.
Hello, Jim. That depends. If you already know `tar', `tar --help' is useful. If you do not know `tar', or merely realize that you do not know it so well after all, than `info tar' becomes the most useful source.
the tar developers seem to have a political problem with the classic man pages.
Maybe slightly political, but the real truth is that it was not practical spoiling human energies at maintaining parallel documentation in many formats. As Texinfo format is _undoubtedly_ superior to `man', at least to anybody being a bit honest, the choice of crafting a parallel `man' page did not remain. On the other hand, the automated derivation of a `man' page from the `--help' output is quite acceptable, and this is why we managed to do it.
But the "info" page for tar on SuSE 5.3 is no substitute for a real man page (how can you print out the whole thing, for example).
It's really the other way around. A `man' page is no substitute for a nice Texinfo manual. Get the `tar' (or `paxutils' :-) distribution, and do: ./configure make dvi then print the resulting .DVI manual on your preferred printer. SuSE gives you really everything and every tool you need for that. If you do not care about manual quality, dump an HTML version of the manual on your printer. Or just print the Info pages: these are ASCII files.
the last thing they want is to confront a cryptic "info" system. Give the poor user a simple, single file to read with a pager like less.
I never understood why people are so reluctant to learn the first letter of the words Next, Previous, Up and Menu, or use the space key to page forward. That's all you need. I would be tempted to say that `less' has many more commands than `info', and I've never been tempted to call it cryptic. I think that the habit of bashing Info is mainly folklore, which came both from die-hard `man' people and keyboard-less Netscape users :-). P.S. - In case some of you wonder :-). I do not consider myself as a Texinfo fanatic. I'm looking forward to move to some SGML-based documentation system, given enough time to learn everything I should. The current state of SGML tools (or Docbook) is quite promising, and I will probably switch once I get the feeling that the pain of the transition will be rewarded enough. Yet, limited to choose between `man' and `Texinfo', the choice is clear. -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/