Re: Why? -- "A Modest Proposal"
Hi.
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 04:50:21PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 10:37:41PM +0100, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > While Gnu does prefer info format to man page format (and they have
> > their reasons, e.g. info allows links), the man pages (usually derived
> > from the texinfo source) are well-structured, complete and have a
> > solid language. I can't agree with you in that they are "atrocious",
> > barring some exceptions. De gustibus... obviously.
>
> I concede that they have a point about how texinfo is superior to the
> *roff format, for several reasons, not least of which being that *roff
> is a proprietary format whose documentation is non-free. However....
>
> tar(1) on Debian 8:
>
> BUGS
> The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents
> instead. Unfortunately, the info document describing tar is licensed
> under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which makes it impossible to
> include any text from that document in this man page. Most of the text
> in this document was automatically extracted from the usage text in the
> source. It may not completely describe all features of the program.
Please don't blame GNU for Debian tar(1). The part you quoted states
clearly that this particular manpage was autogenerated from tar's help
and did not come from GNU.
I agree with your other examples though.
Reco
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