Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* John E. Perry
[05-26-09 20:43]: Html is _so_ much better a way to find your needed information, even if you already know it all. If you don't, man and info are more hindrances than helps.
I fail to see that html of a vague man page is of any more help than the text version, but you are welcome to it.
Patrick, even if the man page is "vague", good documentation (like the tcl/tk documentation) starts with a list of all available commands with brief descriptions of what they are and do. Then hyperlinks take you to the page itself, which starts by listing all the options with brief descriptions of what they are and do. Then hyperlinks take you to the details, which, as you point out, depend a great deal upon the attention the programmers devote to them. Finally, hyperlinks cross-link to similar and dependent commands. Sure, you still have to do the reading, but you don't spend all your time trying to find something you're not even sure exists, or something that attracted your attention deep in the text, but turns out not to be relevant.
The man pages *are* of little use to those who refuse to read or try to read them.
Ah, yes, the old sneer that "it's your own fault this piece of crap doesn't help you because you won't use it." Well, guess what, Patrick -- I do read them. I don't have a choice. Between my shelf of unix/linux books and the man pages, I eventually find what I need. When I say I've _used_ unix for decades, I mean just that. I'm not a systems administrator; not a systems programmer; usually not even an applications programmer, although I have done a good deal of that. So I don't get to use the man pages enough to memorize them. I need reminding of what's available, as the tcl documentation gives me. As an (usually) embedded systems engineer, and linux user mainly in protest against Microsoft's depredations, I don't get to sift through the man pages every day, over and over again. I have work to do that doesn't involve unix or linux, and an outside life that has interests other than linux commands. man wastes a good deal of my time. You must remember that they are usually written by the
programmer who is a programmer, and not necessary a linguistics expert.
I'm quite aware of that, and that fact makes it even more important to have a _good_, _modern_ base for building documentation. You do have the option of contributing a *better* version of
the man page that you find lacking, rather than just bashing the writer/ programmer for his poor efforts, in your eyes.
Now you're deliberately misunderstanding me, as I expected. I don't have that option. I don't know enough about unix/linux, even after all these part-time years, and I don't have the time. Or, to be honest, the will.
So now, you're safe, Doug :-).
from you, but there is a large world looking on.
But no one has lit into Doug yet :-).
and I do not require a mouse to read man pages :^).
Nor do I. In fact, as I mentioned above, I _can't_ use one :-(. jp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org