Re: Removing the manpage requirement for GUI programs?
On Sun, 28 Feb 2010, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> However having it in the policy means we get bug reports about
> manual pages and have to deal with them, while they are not the
> primary source of documentation for command-line options.
I'd hope you'd still get bug reports even if it wasn't in policy.[1] I
know I've filed them for packages that I find have inadequate or
missing manpages when I actually go looking for the documentation.
> In my opinion, we’d be better off with no manual page than with one that
> is not maintained correctly. However the current policy encourages
> shipping a buggy manual page over not shipping it at all.
If the manpage is wrong, I think it'd be worse than not shipping one.
If it's merely incomplete, and references something that is complete,
that's better than nothing. At least you get a reference to where you
should be looking at.
What'd be ideal in these cases is to get the manpages present
upstream, and to integrate them more tightly into the upstream's
documentation, so that upstream updates them when they change command
line options.
Don Armstrong
1: If someone is filing bugs for packages which are missing manpages
when they've never actually wanted to look at the manpage, that's
pathetic. Sure, it may be a bug, but why file a bug when you'll never
notice if it's fixed?
--
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
up where I needed to be.
-- Douglas Adams _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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