In the Dark with Midnight Commander

[Kevin Cozens]

At 07:11 AM 12/24/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Echoing Peter Peres' concern about the inadequacy of Linux documentation:
[snip]
>     Midnight commander (and linux generally) has been a big disappointment:
>I have yet to find any documentation (man pages or anything else), and
>unlike Norton Commander the command-line (bottom) box doesn't automatically
>look for files in the selected directory - I have to issue a cd command.

Windows software isn't much better at times (especially the 
freeware/shareware).

If you need additional information about something installed on your Linux 
machine there are a couple of things you can do. (Using mc as an 
example...) Use the package management system to find out what files were 
installed on the machine. (ie. rpm -ql mc for a system using RPMs). This 
will list all the files installed for the package. Look for files in 'doc' 
directories (ie. /usr/doc, /usr/share/doc) and/or files ending in .htm or 
.html which may be web based documentation.

The 'man' command is more for just a short description on what a given 
program will do and what command line options it will accept that affect 
its behaviour. If you need much more information on a program than that 
related to the command line then a man page is not what you want. At that 
point its time to check the Linux Documentation Project site or do a web 
search for more detailed information (assuming there isn't an official site 
for the program).


Cheers!

Kevin.  (http://www.interlog.com/~kcozens/)

Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172        |"What are we going to do today, Borg?"
E-mail:kcozens at interlog dot com|"Same thing we always do, Pinkutus:
Packet:ve3syb-XXPEJ3/fxIc at public.gmane.org#con.on.ca.na|  Try to assimilate the world!"
#include <disclaimer/favourite>   |              -Pinkutus & the Borg

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