Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)
On Sat 30 May 2020 at 10:08:41 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/30/2020 09:50 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 04:13:22PM +0200, l0f4r0@tuta.io wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > I would suggest the following instead:
> >
> > [download + unpack]
> >
> > > Of course, the method indicated by Tomas is great and may be easier than mine (+ doesn't leave Debian package files on your computer).
> >
> > I don't think "my" method is easier. Personally, I'd go with yours
> > any time (I dislike browsers) -- but I had the impression (wrongly?)
> > that the OP wanted a "webby" solution. But thanks for chiming in
> > with alternatives!
> >
>
> Yes. A "webby" solution can have two benefits in my environment:
> a. may minimize download downloaded byte count.
> b. following intervening links and cross references can lead to
> answering important un-asked questions.
For man pages, I type man foo into google. That usually throws
up one or two links from different sources.
For this specific package, where I don't know the foo to type,
I googled debian popularity contest which got me plenty of
hits, including a load of graphs that it can produce, its
(section 8) man page, the wiki (which has a reference to the FAQ),
and the Debian packages page for popularity-contest.
The last of these (which is obviously already in my FF bookmarks)
gives you links to the package's download page, and you can download
it with that link from different mirrors. I usually paste the address
into wget, if it works (which preserves the metadata), but you
can just click it instead.
Then, as mentioned already, just press Return on the .deb file in
Midnight Commander to look at any files in the package.
I thought most people knew how to use the web like this, for
documentation on anything and (almost) everything.
If there were any chance I'd use the package, I'd download it via
apt, to get it cached, and known to apt. But that requires root.
I hope none of this violates your policy (or, as I would put it,
disagrees with your preferences).
Cheers,
David.
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