On 2022-09-23 at 12:02, Emanuel Berg wrote: > The Wanderer wrote: > >> That's maintainership history, with E-mail addresses attached. > > There should be no history entries in the man pages that relates to > practical aspects that are no longer operational. The E-mail address doesn't relate to a practical aspect, though. It's part of the identifying information for the person being referenced. There might well be multiple people out there in the world with that name, but only one of them has (or used to have) that E-mail address. Do you extend this to say that the man page shouldn't mention former maintainers who are no longer involved with the program? > Commands, examples that once worked but are now removed, options that > are obsolete/deprecated, or indeed e-mails that bounces and thus > cannot be used, none of that has any place, anywhere, in the man > pages. > > The man pages should be about the tool today, and history notes > should be allowed only so far as they don't reduce the practical > usefulness of the documentation and by extension tool use itself. > > This whole discussion is an example of why you don't want incorrect > information in documentation. It's not incorrect, though. It just doesn't mean what you appear to have thought it meant. > To me, that's pretty clear without an example, but if you need one to > use in discussion, feel free to use this. "Here is what happens, if > you include incorrect tech information in manpages and think that is > OK." This isn't technical information, though; it's historical and identifying information. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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