Re: man vs info

[Matus UHLAR - fantomas <uhlar@fantomas.sk>]

On 14.03.07 08:35, Mike McClain wrote:
> In man pages written by the FSF I see this advisory:
> 
> SEE ALSO
>        The full documentation for sync is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
>        the info and sync programs are properly installed  at  your site, the
>        command
>               info coreutils sync

(

Which sucks, because it's likely to be section/node "sync invocation" in
coreutils info doc. However I don't like "info" viewer and even if pinfo is
nice alternative, it does not support its syntax in format of
"pinfo document start_of_section_string", you must use
"pinfo coreutils --node "sync invocation" instead.

So, documents which refer to "info" completely ignores the fact that users
may use alternative to info, which does not support its command line syntax.
I haven't asked FSF about this yet, not filled a bugreport to all of their
packages...
)

>        should give you access to the complete manual.
> 
> which seems to imply that the man page does not contain the 'complete manual'.
> 
> Every time I've gone to the info page, it has contained the same information
> though sometimes broken into smaller chunks it's all been there.

Sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's not. As the others pointed out, info
format is preferred by FSF.

Dor some packages, if you don't have the -doc installed, 'info' viewer
displays the manpage, in such case you may wonder why it _is_ the same.

> Has anyone seen am example where there was any more information in the info
> pages than the man pages?

many times, as it was alre
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