Re: man or info?

[Simon Law <sfllaw@engmail.uwaterloo.ca>]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 05:49:28PM -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote:
> I much prefer 'man' to 'info' (and I guess at least some Debian developers
> do too as there are so many Debian-edited man pages).  Anyone know why GNU
> uses info now instead?  And is there any way to influence the decision, or
> am I just way too late?

	The Debian Project mandates that every binary needs an
associated man page.  There are various justifications for this; but the
mostly useful of which is that one can type `man foo` and find out what
foo does in a quick summary.]

	The GNU Project encourages the use of TeXinfo manuals, because
they are far better manuals than man pages.  Note that the GNU project
does not disapprove of man pages; it's just that many of their
maintainers are too busy to maintain both man and info documentation.  A
TeXinfo manual allows cross-referrencing of documents, as well as
structured presentation.  This makes it a much better format for a
comprehensive user guide or reference manual; which a man page is not
the proper tool.

	I myself prefer reading man pages as reference cards; when I
know a certain functionality exists in the program--but I don't remember
how to get at it.  For more in-depth knowledge, I will usually sit down
with the TeXinfo manual and absorb it for the subtleties and nuances
that every program has.

	So you see, there is a place for both types of documentation.

Simon


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org