François Pinard wrote:
[Dave Howorth]
there are lots of websites that contain HTML-formatted man pages. Are there any sites that have HTML-formatted info pages (preferably all pages for one app on one HTML page :) ?
Yes. Info pages are one by-product of Texinfo format, which also can produce laser-printable manuals, and HTML pages. At the very beginning, some people were writing Info pages directly, but it did not last. The proper way is writing Texinfo, and deriving Info out of it.
In the tool generating HTML out of Texinfo, there are options for selecting one bulky HTML page, instead of one HTML per node. I see two reasons for why one would want one bulky page (I'm curious to know if there are other reasons): either because HTML browsers cannot conveniently search at once through a bunch of related pages, or else to print a manual in a single browser print request.
My primary reason is that I DO NOT WANT TO SPEND MY TIME NAVIGATING FROM NODE TO NODE trying to find where in the hell the particular documentation for a command has been hidden by the not-as-clever-as-they-think-themselves-to-be guys at FSF. Their programs are good. Their documentation format sucks.
I would think the above reasons come with HTML format. I remember that "info" knows to search through all nodes (a bit like Vim knows how to search in all its documentation). For printing a manual, the Texinfo to DVI route produces a much nicer manual than the HTML browser route.
I have no interest in printing out a manual. On the other hand, say when I'm using chmod(3) for some of its more esoteric purposes, I do have a very high interest in being able to find the relevant section of the documentation quickly, without being forced to hunt around for several minutes like a blind man in a maze. It's just fucking stupid. Other than that, gnu software is great. (And I find it very interesting that the man page for GCC is complete, without snide references to see the info page for the complete documentation.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org