Feature changed by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Feature #305336, revision 19 Title: [NONCODE] Ship man page for every executable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Description: - User / Administrator should find a dedicated man page for every - executable in openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems. + 1. Even graphical applications need docs outside the application + itself. The need to run the application, to know what does it does, is + not good. + 2. You need a standard documentation format; where standard = expected + for people needing that documentation. Who are, often, not knowing the + distro well (so the format can't be distro-specific). And the format + must be the same for all binaries/packages. One can't rely on the fact + it will always be easy and intuitive to find that some application is + part KDE (for example) and one can get the documentation in konqueror + when typing 'help:/application'. + 3. To view the documentation must be as easy as possible and with as + minimal resources as possible. This is why online documentation is not + so good (you need a running Internet net connection), documentation in + a web browser as well (you need X and graphical desktop). HTML is + questionable as it (as a format) allows so many extensions that it is + needed to expect that such documentation will not be readable in text + browsers after some time. + 4. Many parts are shared between openSUSE and the enterprise products. + And, in the enterprise world, we need to be much more standard + conforming. Including the documentation. A UNIX admin will use the + 'man' command for getting info about the binary. 'info' system is here + as well, for many years. But 'man' is still more usual. Imagine a + server room with hundreds/thousands of servers of several UN*X clones - + 'man' works everywhere, and Linux is expected to be "on par" also with + respect to those capabilities. + These four points stay behind the idea of man pages needed and provided + for everything. Relations: - At http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing a list of all packages with missing man pages can be found (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing) Use Case: User / Administrator should find a dedicated man page for every executable in openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems. Discussion: #2: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) (2008-10-22 15:00:11) I agree with the intention, but shouldn't it be rather 'documentation for each executable'? Newer stuff uses mostly info-pages, afaiks #3: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-11-10 14:31:15) (reply to #2) It is valid to have a pointer to the info pages in the man-pages, sure. But man-pages are the UNIX proposed way of doing documentation. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305336