Re: Debian GNU/Linux Reference Card under construction
On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 09:45:16AM +0800, Isaac To wrote:
> >>>>> "Colin" == Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
>
> Colin> FWIW, this isn't true: man -k;
>
> info --apropos
That doesn't search man pages; it searches info pages. Not the same
thing at all, and not at all as useful.
> Colin> man uses your preferred pager while info has its own built-in
> Colin> (and fairly sucky) one;
>
> The price to pay is that it has no navigation support at all in man: no
> cross reference, no parent, and no index.
There's w3mman if you're crazy :-)
And you aren't *supposed* to need an index for man pages, beyond what
apropos gives you, nor a parent node. The whole point is that they're
concise reference material. Man pages are a distinct documentation
format with a distinct purpose.
> If you don't like Emacs-style keys in info, there is --vi-keys.
Binary toggles aren't nearly as flexible as being able to swap in your
own pager.
> Colin> man can format man pages to PostScript etc.;
>
> TexInfo files can be formatted to PostScript using just plain TeX, just like
> man files can be formatted to PostScript using Groff. Of course, formated
> .info cannot be formatted to PostScript, just like catman files cannot be
> formatted to PostScript.
I wasn't arguing about the respective source formats. You said that the
info client can replace man. It can't.
> Colin> I don't see a way to specify a manual section to info;
>
> Try "info 'time(2)'". (Can it be any more intuitive than that?)
It could be documented :-)
Actually, the quoting is suboptimal, which is why man has always done it
with 'man 2 time'.
> Colin> does info *really* handle non-ASCII encodings better than man
> Colin> currently does?; and so on.
>
> For this I don't know, though. If this is a problem it should really be
> fixed.
It's no small project.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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