Re: Do have programs have poor documentation?

[Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

On Monday 02 January 2017 01:00:56 Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2017 14:46:30 Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > I cannot recall ever seeing a more complete information about
> > > anything I ever looked up, telling me something that wasn't in the
> > > man page.
> >
> > Compare
> >   man ls
> > and
> >   info ls
> >
> > The chapter of ls in coreutils.info is much longer than the man page.
> > It gives some background information for the options which are grouped
> > by * Which files are listed::
> >   * What information is listed::
> >   * Sorting the output::
> >   * Details about version sort::
> >   * General output formatting::
> >   * Formatting file timestamps::
> >   * Formatting the file names::
>
> I believe that is all in my man page on ls, its quite lengthy here on
> this wheezy system. If not, then its the exception that proves the rule.
>
> > That's central GNU homeland, of course. The situation in other regions
> > of GNU/Linux varies heavily.
> >
> >
> > Have a nice day :)
> >
> > Thomas
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Man ls was written by Richard Stallman, which ought to mean something.

It does offer:
 <quote>Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ls>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ls invocation'</quote>  
which surely ought to be enough for anyone.  But many commands have a less 
ideal offering.

Lisi