info and man

[Paul King]

On 23 May 2006 at 12:42, Lennart Sorensen spaketh these wourdes:

> On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 12:37:40AM -0400, Paul King wrote:
> > This is a pet peeve that has been bugging me ever since Linux has
> > adopted "info" as the standard for help documents. 
> 
> Linux most certainly has not.  I believe the linux kernel uses docbook,
> generating html and others from that.

While I appreciate the fine distinction between Linux and GNU, I think the 
general use among most people (including most TLUGgers I have noticed) is to say 
"Linux" when we refer to the operating system and its attendant commands, taken 
as a whole. While that would not make Richard Stallman happy, I think that is the 
convention that most of us have adopted. Whether this is appropriate or "correct" 
is another matter. 

I would predict that this disticntion will matter less and less to the general 
public when mom, pop and aunt Martha start adopting Linux. They'll just call the 
whole thing Linux, just like in the Old Days (TM) when people used to call DOS 
"WordPerfect", because they spent their whole time there to write documents, move 
and delete files, and create directories as though it were the OS itself.

That being said, I didn't know that docbook/html was used for the kernel docs. I 
usually read the stuff underneath /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ if I want to know 
something about how to tweak the kernel. That stuff is usually plain, raw ASCII.

Paul 

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