Re: writing man pages or texinfo documentation
On Wed, May 26, 1999 at 09:52:56PM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
> Please realize that the documentation is written in texinfo, not
> directly in the Info format.
Sorry, I didn't make that clear enough in my original post. My suggestion
was that we should consider *more* flexible systems than texinfo. I just
thought that SGML might make a better system for some purposes. There's
nothing to stop you writing or generating [tex]info format if that's what
you prefer, but it would make sense to use a Web-like interface rather than
an Info-like one.
My major quibble with info is that the "dir" file is invariably wrong (even
on my stock Debian GNU/Linux system), so "info standards" doesn't work if
"standards" isn't in /usr/info/dir even if "standards.info" is in /usr/info.
Perhaps it would make sense to use a heirachy of directories for different
types of programs and have info read the directories, e.g.
/usr/info/Editors/emacs.info
/usr/info/Languages/C/gcc.info
/usr/info/Misc/jargon.info.gz
etc.
Also, perhaps "man" should search for an info document if a man page isn't
found (removing the requirement to produce man pages for programs that
already have info pages). You could also do some trickery to allow printing
a` la troff-based man by calling texi2dvi. Either way, the man/info duality
isn't especially helpful at the moment.
> Moreover, it is the GNU standard.
So is their idiosyncratic C formatting style, and signing ownership of a
program over to the FSF; many people choose not to follow these
recommendations because they're not convenient.
I'm not knocking texinfo---hypertext and printable documentation from a
standard format is a great idea. I'd just like to see the implementation
made less confusing. :)
--
Adam Sampson
azz@josstix.demon.co.uk
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