Re: Undocumented binary

[Manfred Wassmann <manolo@NCC-1701.B.shuttle.de>]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, peter karlsson wrote:

> Steve M. Robbins:
> 
> > The undocumented page provides no more information than "No manual
> > entry for foo" (but the former is much longer to read). What is the
> > point?
> 
> Personally, I reason that if I get "No manual entry", it is a program
> that probably shouldn't have entered myself, but if I get undocumented,
> it's something that I can use, but no-one has ever bothered informing
> me of it.

I have a different point of view. If I get "No manual entry for foo" I
know at once that nobody has written a man page. (I know the program is
there because I have run it already but had some problems).

When there is an "undocumented" manpage instead, man tells me
"Reformatting foo(1), please wait..." and I think "Aah lets see how ... 
f*<$! Another lazy maintainer again!"

It really is annoying!

And back to the first post. If you don't want to write 100 manpages for
your 100 programs in the package you can at least write one and symlink it
to the other 99 names.

-- 
Manfred Wassmann
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