on Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 01:10:51PM -0600, Kent West (westk@acu.edu) wrote:
> At the risk of starting holy war, why has the GNU project decided to go
> with info pages instead of man pages?
>
> I googled several times with different search terms, but didn't find
> much; this was probably the best hit I found:
> http://users.netwit.net.au/~pursang/dtil/howto_9.html
>
> and it doesn't really address the issues.
>
> Some of the other hits seemed to imply that man pages were better,
> although there was no definitive explanation as to why (or why not).
>
> Anyone have any insight on this question?
>
> If I were to write up some documentation for some application, would I
> want to create it as a man page, or an info page, or as both, or as some
> higher(/lower)-level format that then gets converted (by me/by viewer
> tools?), what?
>
> (The Linux.com article at
> http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/02/05/1651203 is what started my
> mind down this path.)
While it doesn't directly answer your question:
http://twiki.iwethey.org/Main/InfoVsManpage
My thoughts:
- HTML wasn't yet invented (though it followed hard on the heels of).
- Info integrates well into RMS's windowmanager. Emacs.
- Info is useful for producing books. Books are useful for selling to
raise funds (DocBook would be even better, IMO).
But otherwise: Info sucks.
And no, I won't respond to any followups which indicate clearly the
poster _hasn't_ read the link above, which summarizes the _last_ time
this thread erupted here.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Geek for hire: http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
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