Re: Info vs Man
On 2004-02-11, J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) penned:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 13:10:51 -0600, Kent West wrote:
>> At the risk of starting holy war, why has the GNU project decided to
>> go with info pages instead of man pages?
>
>> 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?
>
> The man format is a suitable format for reference documentation of
> software that isn't too complex. If a manpage is larger that say 15 to
> 20 physical pages, the lack of structure (or if you will, the rigidity
> of the sequential section structure) becomes annoying for readers.
>
> The GNU info format is a hypertext format; it allows documentation to
> have more structure, both hierarchical (sections, chapters, appendices
> etc.) and non-hierarchical (cross-references, footnotes). This allows
> it to be an acceptable format for larger pieces of documentation, such
> as documentation of more complex programs or applications and for
> tutorial documentation.
I see your point ... but ugh.
I'll take a single document that I can search and eyeball-scan over
multiple linked documents almost always. Example: the fetchmail man
page. Yes, it's farking huge, but I can find what I need by searching
on a key term.
When I'm looking at the mutt (or any) documentation online, I'd rather
have the "one big file" approach than the linked approach, too.
Maybe it's just me, but I've never felt comfortable with info. If the
man pages give me some line about how info is the official documentation
format, I just head to google. Info is too much of a pain.
--
monique
Reply to: