One of those monumental days ........

[Tim Writer]

"Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfaj-uVmiyxGBW52XDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org> writes:

> yOn Wed, 9 Nov 2005, Tim Writer wrote:
> 
> > "Walter Dnes" <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> writes:
> >
> >>   - Give me a large manpage, and I'll use the "/" key to find what I'm
> >>     looking for.
> >
> > Ever tried looking up something in the bash man page?  Say, a builtin like
> > "set". It'll take you a while to find the "set" you're looking for.
> 
>      If you don't want to use the builtin help (help set), you can do:
> 
> sman bash ^SHELL\ BUILTIN\ COMMANDS  ## And a few PgDns
> 
> 
>      My sman function is:
> 
> sman() {
>     LESS="$LESS${2:+ +/$2}" man  "$@"
> }

Sure, but you have to get to know the man page first. And I know the bash man
page better than I want to, it was just an example of how unwieldy a big man
page can be.

>      If you use the man page more than a few times, you get to know the
>      section headings and can go straight to them. Or you can get a
>      list with:
> 
> man bash | grep '^[A-Z]'
> 
>      (Hmm... perhaps I'll write a little script to present a menu of
>      the man page headings...)

TkMan does a nice job of this.

> [snip]
> > In general, it's not so much the format that's the problem but the
> > quality and coverage of the content. Unfortunately, most developers
> > (myself included) prefer writing code to documentation and there are
> > relatively few volunteers who write documentation.
> 
>      The bash man page is one of the best, but it requires careful
>      reading in some spots.

Again, it was only an example of the unwieldiness of a large man page. The
content is decent but the organization, IMO, is poor.

But I love to bash bash. zsh rules! :-)

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
647.722.5301                                      toronto, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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