[GTALUG] man pages [was Re:Suggestions: A Book for a Beginner, new to the Linux Shell]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Kevin Cozens via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| On 16-07-17 11:59 PM, ac via talk wrote:
| > I guess most of us have not used man pages for so many years,
| 
| hm... that could be an interesting little survey to put up on a website. The
| question could be "How do you get information about a new program?". The
| options could be: built-in help, man, info, all of the above, man and info, or
| other (ie. internet search).
| 
| I use man pages all the time. I don't remember the last time I used info.

Man pages are not meant to be tutorial.  This is good and bad.  It
fits in with the UNIX ideal of a tool doing one simple thing and doing
it well: the documentation for that tool does not need to be intricate.

With something as big and ugly as BASH, it is not really great.  I
find I do a lot of searching (less(1) is good for that).  Perhaps
hyphenation should be turned off when formatting man pages OR less
should learn how to search across line breaks.

I dislike info, probably for cultural reasons.  GNU jumped in and made
things worse.  Especially with the stub manpages that said "go read
info".  Actually, those stubs are useful reminders but they rub salt
in the wound.

When I have to read info (most recently to find out what a GCC flag
meant) I find pinfo a better interface.  Surely there is an even
better one using a web browser but I haven't looked.

Linux is a bit of a mess.  Debian, as I understands it, demands man
pages (good!) but Fedora doesn't.  Have you hunted for stuff in
/usr/share/doc/?  LibreOffice seems to have no manpages.  Is there
anything more useless than LibreOffice "help"?  I often end up googling.