Re: Info vs Man
On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, Monique Y. Herman wrote :
» Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:52:25 -0700
» From: Monique Y. Herman <spam@bounceswoosh.org>
» To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
» Subject: Re: Info vs Man
» Resent-Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 22:12:17 -0600 (CST)
» Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
»
» 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.
Pinfo has some searching capability of info files but not complex or regex
searching stile.
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