Re: writing man pages or texinfo documentation
On Tue, May 25, 1999 at 12:14:15AM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
>
> IMHO, we really should not waste time on man pages.
Of course I am siiting between two chairs here (as I am a Debian developer,
I am bound to Debian policy. As I am a Hurd developer, I am bound to GNU
policy). I hope everyone understands my complicate situation.
> It is better to
> work on proper documentation instead, extending the current Hurd
> texinfo manual. Having some information in man pages and other
> information in the manual is confusing. What will happen is that at a
> certain point the manual pages will even contradict what's in the
> manual.
Of course you are right.
> Note that some of the newer GNU packages have a Perl script that
> creates man pages from --help and --version output. Take a look at
> ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.0i.tar.gz for an example.
> IMHO this is would be the best solution for creating man pages for
> Hurd programs.
This would be good enough.
To explain: we can follow the letter if not the spirit of Debian policy by
opening a bug report abour missing man pages and adding links for the man
pages missing to the "undocumented" man page. This would be sufficient. A
dummy web page with only synopsis information would be even better. It
should refer to the info documentation, and all real work should be put
there.
Please understand that I can't say that no man pages at all are a good idea.
My personal preferences have little place here, because I also represent
Debian to some extent here.
What you said Mark is a very good (IMHO an excellent) compromise.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
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