Re: [OT] Re: how do i make my program better?
On Sunday 19 November 2000 16:44, An Thi-Nguyen Le wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 19, 2000 at 02:12:29PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen typed:
> } | I use man pages all the time. Maybee for strictly GUI programs man
> } | pages are less usefull, certainly not useless though. for CLI man
> } | pages are a must.
> }
> } And if you write them in docbook or texinfo they aren't just man pages
> } - they can easily be converted into other kinds of documentation.
>
> There's a tool called Rosetta Man, or rman, that converts manpages to
> html and other formats. Yes, there are navigation links to each section,
> and navigation links to other manpages. Groff can also convert a manpage
> to postscript or text. So what's the problem?
>
> Just because something is written in texinfo or docbook doesn't mean
> it's the epitome of good documentation either. There are good manpages
> out there, and there are horrible (and the worst part is that it's long
> AND horrible AND has a useless index) info pages out there. C'est la vie.
>
> When I'm in a hurry (e.g., the system is in single-user mode because
> critical part X has decided to die today), I do NOT want to spend time
> searching the crappy index of an info page, or through each section of
> an info document, which can be divided into *several* files. I utterly
> hate info, pinfo, and tkinfo; I want a pager like less when I read my
> docs, or possibly reed if I have time. I'm also not going to be very
> fond of docbook output at this stage.
> And man -k can be your friend.
Fortunately info and pinfo handle man pages also. And pinfo does it much
better than "traditional" man. So there's no problem if man pages exist but
if any docs (man or/and info) are provided by given package.
--
Mariusz Przygodzki | Good judgement comes from experience.
dune@home.pl | Experience comes from bad judgement.
http://www.dune.home.pl |
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